- lean
- lean vb *slant, slope, inclinelean adj Lean, spare, lank, lanky, gaunt, rawboned, angular, scrawny, skinny mean thin because of absence of super-fluous flesh.Lean stresses the lack of fat and therefore of rounded contours{
lean as a greyhound— Thackeray
}{a small, lean, wiry man with sunk cheeks weathered to a tan— Masefield
}Spare often suggests abstemiousness or sinewy strength{he had the spare form . . . which became a student— George Eliot
}{the spare, alert and jaunty figure that one often finds in army men— Wolfe
}Lank suggests tallness or length as well as leanness; often also it implies wasting{meager and lank with fasting grown, and nothing left but skin and bone— Swift
}{a pack of lank hounds, sore-footed and sore-eared— H. L. Davis
}Lanky adds the suggestions of awkwardness and loose-jointedness{a lanky youth, all arms and legs
}{lanky men and women ... so tall and attenuated that they seem at times to approach the one-dimensional— Coates
}Gaunt stresses want of sufficient flesh to conceal the bones; it often connotes overwork or undernourishment{her bony visage— gaunt and deadly wan— Wordsworth
}{this one with the passing of the years had grown lean and gaunt and the rocklike bones of her face stood forth and her eyes were sunken— Buck
}Rawboned often equals gaunt, but it is applied particularly to persons of large, ungainly frame and it seldom implies undernourishment{a long, gawky, rawboned Yorkshireman— Kipling
}Angular implies not only absence of curves, but jerkiness or stiffness in movement{sudden retirement of the angular female in oxydated bombazine— Holmes
}Scrawny and skinny imply extreme thinness but scrawny may additionally suggest slightness or a shrunken meager quality{lank scrawny chickens
}{a barren slope covered with scrawny vegetation
}{the scrawniest, wretchedest horse I had ever seen— Kalischer
}while skinny suggests a stringy fleshless condition such as is associated with a deficiency of vitality or strength{skinny children
}{the skinniest human being I ever saw. He had not enough flesh on his bones to make a decent-sized chicken— Lynd
}Antonyms: fleshy
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
