Careful Words

lean (n.)

lean (v.)

lean (adv.)

lean (adj.)

Let me have men about me that are fat,

Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights:

Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;

He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Julius Caesar. Act i. Sc. 2.

Out of my lean and low ability

I 'll lend you something.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Twelfth Night. Act iii. Sc. 4.

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players.

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.

And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad

Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard;

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lined,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;

His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): As You Like It. Act ii. Sc. 7.

  They lard their lean books with the fat of others' works.

Robert Burton (1576-1640): Anatomy of Melancholy. Democritus to the Reader.

Falstaff sweats to death,

And lards the lean earth as he walks along.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry IV. Part I. Act ii. Sc. 2.

And though mine arm should conquer twenty worlds,

There's a lean fellow beats all conquerors.

Thomas Dekker (1572-1632): Old Fortunatus.

One Pinch, a hungry lean-faced villain,

A mere anatomy.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): The Comedy of Errors. Act v. Sc. 1.