lean

To lean is to tip your body out of upright, nearly always against something that will take your weight. You lean on a fence to watch the match, lean over the table to see the map, lean back until the chair complains.

Objects lean as well: a ladder leans against a wall, and the tower at Pisa leans and does very little else. Lean ON somebody means rely on them — or, harder, put pressure on them until they agree. Lean TOWARDS means half-prefer: I'm leaning towards the blue one. There is a separate adjective spelled the same and worth keeping apart: lean meat has little fat, a lean year is a poor one, and a lean company has had everything spare cut out of it. The past tense is leaned in American English and often leant in British, both sounding like lent.

Phrases it lives in

• lean and mean — stripped of anything unnecessary and ready to compete hard