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Lean-to   Listen
noun
Lean-to  n.  
1.
(Arch.) A shed or slight building placed against the wall of a larger structure and having a single-pitched roof; called also penthouse, and to-fall. "The outer circuit was covered as a lean-to, all round this inner apartment."
2.
A crude, usually temporary shelter comprising a lean-to roof braced against any convenient support, as a wall, a tree or a pole. The roof may extend all the way to the ground.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Lean-to" Quotes from Famous Books



... For these, with their advantage of increased light, more headway was necessary. Aisle walls were consequently heightened or altogether rebuilt. The acutely pointed roof of the nave could no longer be continued downwards to cover these higher aisles. The aisle was consequently covered with a lean-to roof, or with a separate gabled roof of its own. A free increase in width was thus possible. The church of Appleton-le-Street in Yorkshire has a short nave with north and south aisles. The north aisle, added in the early part of the thirteenth century, is narrow, ...
— The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church • A. Hamilton Thompson

... Barney was already in the power of unseen hands, which had seized upon him in the darkness; an old virago had ordered us into the house; and when we had declined to partake of the relics of a feast which strewed the table, we were ignominiously consigned to a den of a lean-to opening upon the piazza. A "terribly-strange bed" indeed was the old four-poster, which swayed and shrieked at the slightest touch, and myriad the enemies which there lay in wait for our blood. We were not murdered, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... doorway into the house. At a curt nod from Gowan, Ashton followed him around to the far side of the house, leaving Knowles in the act of hastily reloading his pipe. Under a lean-to that covered a door in the side of the house was a barrel of water and a bench with two basins. On a row of pegs above hung a number of towels, all ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet

... soon out of the race, for a lean-to shed on his side of the wall put a stop to further pursuit, and Dan'l, who looked as malicious as a savage after a wild beast, had the hunt ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn

... home of one of my father's kinsmen, a man who could neither read nor write, though he knew his Bible from cover to cover and could cite accurately chapter and verse of any text from which he chose to preach. There was but one room in his house of logs with its lean-to kitchen of rough planks, but never did I hear father's kinsman or his wife offer any word of excuse for anything. When it was time for victuals his wife, with all the graciousness of nobility, would stand ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... and as she had, on occasion, as caustic a tongue as "Ma," the man had not a very agreeable time. It was decided later to bring the woman and child to the hut, and there, beneath her verandah, they rigged up a little lean-to, where they were housed, Jean sleeping with them at night and keeping a watchful eye on the mother. "It is really," said "Ma," "far braver and kinder of her to live with that heathen woman with her fretting habits than it is for her to go out in the dark and fight with snakes. ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... collection of tents and of lean-to shacks made of boughs and canvas, three or four log cabins, and a store, scattered along the side of the valley, amidst great trees. To the east showed the bluish gap, of which Mr. Grigsby had spoken, in the hills, and beyond the hills was the snowy range. Through ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin

... in the space between the rock and the bole of the oak with moss and stones, and then by building a heavy lean-to roof of leafy branches, thatched with lashed bundles of marsh-grass, they constructed in two days a fairly comfortable shack, hard by an abundant, never-failing supply of the finest water ever a human ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... to pay for it, and in another year's time, and I have the help of God in it, I shall have saved enough for our house. What thinkest thou of a gambrel-roof and a lean-to, two square front rooms, both fire-rooms, and a living-room? And peonies and hollyhocks in the front yard, and two popple-trees, one on each ...
— Giles Corey, Yeoman - A Play • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... men arrived, carrying the stranger. He had been plucky and had insisted on walking a little, and the party arrived earlier than I expected. When he had thanked me for what I had done, he began an inspection of my rude dwelling and the smaller lean-to, even peering into the huts connected with my bungalow—new in ...
— Homo - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith

... lamps, which by the changeful colour of their light, and by the incessant snapping sounds with which they burned, I have since divined to be electric. At the extreme end an open door gave us a glimpse into what must have been a lean-to shed beside the chimney; and this, in strong contrast to the room, was painted with a red reverberation as from furnace-doors. The walls were lined with books and glazed cases, the tables crowded with the implements of chemical research; great glass accumulators ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... occupied the other, giving accommodation to cows, horses, pigs, and chickens innumerable. Immediately before the house was a small potato garden, with a few peach and apple trees. The house was built of logs, and consisted of two rooms, besides a little shanty or lean-to, that was used as a kitchen. Both rooms were comfortably furnished with good beds, drawers, &c. The farmer's wife, and a young woman who looked like her sister, were spinning, and three little children were playing about. The woman ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various

... vacated by the corpse. Also, he indicated the next weakest, telling him to wait for a place until the next man died. Then, ordering one of the well men to take a squad from the field-force and build a lean-to addition to the hospital, he continued along the run-way, administering medicine and cracking jokes in beche-de-mer English to cheer the sufferers. Now and again, from the far end, a weird wail was raised. When he arrived there he found the ...
— Adventure • Jack London

... gain an entrance there. He was fearful that to enter by the front door would be but to proclaim his presence, but at last he perceived that there was an entrance by a small door that was partly open above the roof of the little lean-to on the side of the barn. Carefully he climbed up on the roof and cautiously made his way to the door. He peered within but it was dark and at first he was unable to discern anything. He waited until his eyes became somewhat accustomed to the dim light and then saw ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson

... alternate digging and plugging went on. Sometimes Badgy burrowed himself out in one night, sometimes he would not succeed in reaching the top by the time the little girl called him. And since he emerged under cover of the vacant coal-shed and kitchen that were built against the house as a lean-to, his depredations were not discovered by any of the other members of the family. Once, indeed, he was nearly caught, for he came out directly in front of the kitchen door. But judicious trampling by the little girl soon reduced the soft pile of dirt he had ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates

... sun going out like a candle: the hastily made camp with the half-breed spotting the dry wood against the coming moment when night would drop over the forest like a curtain over a stage; the "lean-to" between the burning logs, where he dozes or dreams, barely beyond the reach of the flames; the silence all about, Jaquis pulling at his pipe, and the huskies sleeping in the snow like German babies under the eiderdown. Sometimes, ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman

... flashed a swift, half-puzzled glance at his chief's face; he started to ask a question, then scowled and checked himself and turned instead to kindle a fire in the stove of the lean-to kitchen of the cabin. But a half-hour later he was still murmuring the last phrase over to himself, perplexedly, when Steve came leading the horse Ragtime up to the open door. Saddled and with reins a-trail, the animal had been wandering throughout ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans

... her head tied up in a dirty towel, her dress ragged and dirty, and much too small for her abundant figure. She welcomed us telling us the "po chile was bad sick" but she would talk to us. As the door of the lean-to kitchen was open, it offered a breath of outside air, even though polluted with the garbage scattered on the ground, and the odors from chickens, cats and dogs ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration

... its square log room and dirt floor open to the sun, Dallas performed her part of the building, and thatched the hip-roof with coarse grass from a meadow. Next, the well was dug; and the barn built as a lean-to, for the Lancasters knew little, but had heard much, about the blizzards of the territory. Then, while the elder girl covered the slanting rafters over Ben and Betty's stall, the section-boss hauled ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... the flap in the counter to let her through. The doorway beyond gave entrance to a wide hall, or "entry," between the store and the living-room. The kitchen was in a lean-to at the back. The table in the big room was already spread with a clean red-and-white checked tablecloth and set with heavy chinaware for a meal. A huge caster graced the center of the table, containing glass receptacles for salt, red and black pepper, catsup, vinegar, and oil. Knives, ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper

... story. In the centre of the group was the hall, with doors opening into the court. On one side stood the kitchen; on the other the chapel when the thane became a Christian and required the services of the Church for himself and his household. Numerous other rooms with lean-to roofs were joined on to the hall, and a tower for purposes of defence in case of an attack. Stables and barns were scattered about outside the house, and with the cattle and horses lived the grooms and herdsmen, while villeins and cottiers dwelt in the humble, low, shedlike buildings, ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield

... cockpit; cubbyhole; cook house; entre-sol; mezzanine floor; ground floor, rez-de-chaussee; basement, kitchen, pantry, bawarchi-khana, scullery, offices; storeroom &c (depository) 636; lumber room; dairy, laundry. coach house; garage; hangar; outhouse; penthouse; lean-to. portico, porch, stoop, stope, veranda, patio, lanai, terrace, deck; lobby, court, courtyard, hall, vestibule, corridor, passage, breezeway; ante room, ante chamber; lounge; piazza, veranda. conservatory, greenhouse, bower, arbor, summerhouse, alcove, grotto, hermitage. lodging &c (abode) 189; bed ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... roan and rode away down the slope, waving his hand to us. And it was with a heavy heart that I went to feed our white mare, whinnying for food in the lean-to. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... tongue and cutting off enough meat for supper and breakfast, we scrambled down to near the torrent, and after some search found a good spot for camping. Hot and dusty from the day's hard tramp, I undressed and took a plunge in the stream, the icy water making me gasp. Then, having built a slight lean-to of brush, and dragged together enough dead timber to burn all night, we cut long alder twigs, sat down before some embers raked apart, and grilled and ate our buffalo meat with the utmost relish. Night had fallen; a cold wind blew up the valley; ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... little lean-to, filled to over-flowing with a stove, some tin cooking pans, a table full of soiled dishes and a case ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... the way round to the back of the long low house, to where a high thick hedge of thorns shut in a lean-to shed thatched with mealie leaves and stalks; these, the dry remains of a load of Indian corn, being laid on heavily, so as to form a good shelter for the horses, haltered to a rough ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn

... he must be able to endure hardship and exposure. Sometimes he lives for months in the woods with no food but meat and no shelter but a lean-to of brush or even the trunk of a hollow tree into which ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy

... up from the abundant supply of mattresses and blankets belonging to the Elmers. Jan Jansen and Captain Johnson, who, Mark said, must be related, as their names were the same, spread their blankets in the forward end of the boat. On shore the negro crew built for themselves a thatched lean-to of poles and palm-leaves beside the fire, that was already throwing its cheerful light across the dark surface of ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe

... Bill, after an evening of considerable worry, had retired to his little lean-to bedroom with its low, camp bedstead. It was useless sitting up any longer attempting one of those big worrying "thinks" which, usually, he was rather ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... to the party who had stopped to camp for the night. It was a clear warm evening. After they had hobbled the horses in a near meadow flat, Jack and his father made a lean-to for the women and children and roofed it with bark. Then they cut wood and built a fire and gathered boughs for bedding. Later, tea was made and beefsteaks and bacon grilled on spits of green birch, the dripping fat being caught on slices of toasting ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... travel had shorn away so many habits which are the outcome of too much civilization, that they had come down to a primitive simplicity of living. The hut contained two small bedrooms, scarcely bigger than cabins on board ship, one sitting-room, and a lean-to kitchen in the rear. There was not an atom of paint about the place; it was all bare, brown wood, restful to the eyes, and in perfect harmony with the ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant

... to the windows, and entirely over the little lean-to that had been erected at the time that little Danny had added his feeble wail ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung

... was working at that. On the second day he delivered, snarling, a small ingot of the white metal. He was imprisoned in the lean-to-shed in which the electrolysis went on. But Tommy had more than a suspicion that he ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

... skins a lean-to was speedily constructed against the wall. The snow was hammered down, and a hearth made of half a dozen logs packed closely together. Some brands were brought up from the fire in the hut, and the skins across the end of the lean-to dropped, so that the air ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty

... central room, 262 feet long, 98 feet wide, and 68 feet in height, with two lean-to annexes of 16 feet each, making the total width 100 feet. The structure is wholly of metal, and is so arranged as to permit of advantage being taken of every foot of space under cover. For this purpose the system of construction without tie-beams, known as the "De Dion type," has ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various

... return. How they were as good as their word and how, when Johnny returned, they stood aside and let Johnny and the sheriff fight it out. How the sheriff beat Johnny to the draw, but was wounded in the left arm while Johnny fired a second shot as he lay dying on the floor of the lean-to. How the sheriff's wound was dressed by the companions of the dead Johnny, and how he was safely dismissed with honor, as between brave men, and how afterwards he hunted those same men down one ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand

... the bloodhounds, starting from the place where the man had lain on the grass, and scarce were they lost to sight among the brushwood when they loudly gave tongue, and Grubner cried to us to come to him. Behind a tall alder bush, which had not yet lost its leaves, was a wooden lean-to on piles, built there by the Convent fisherman wherein to dry his nets; and beneath this shelter lay an old man in the garb of a serving-man, who doubtless had lost his life in the struggle with Uhlwurm. But Kubbeling ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... the boy disappeared, Lowrie ran to the window which opened on the side of the house. When he looked down his hope fled. At one time there had been a lean-to shed running along that side of the building. By the roof of it he could have got to the ground unseen. Now he remembered that it had been torn down the year before; there was a straight and perilous drop ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand

... A "lean-to" of brush was soon erected, and in one corner the boy made a bed of fir boughs, upon which he placed the sufferer, who, after the first attempt, made ...
— Neal, the Miller - A Son of Liberty • James Otis

... to which at a later date a lean-to had been added, faced the bush: from the verandah there was a wide view of the surrounding country. Between the back of the house and the beach rose a huge sand-hill, sparsely grown with rushes and coarse grass. ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson

... long oars, and try to get the unwieldy length up and down stream; they wear only a waist cloth, and look so sun-bitten; there is but one tiny patch of shadow in the middle of their island under a lean-to cottage of matting, with a burgee on a tall bamboo flying over it. Our wash sends their dug-out canoe bobbling alongside their raft, and splashes over and between the logs, and the raftsmen have to bustle to keep ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... been crying at the tops of their voices, but were now only whimpering miserably, and trying at intervals to dry their tear-stained cheeks with the skirts of their frocks. The baby, wrapped in an old shawl, lay on its mother's knee, asleep and unheeded. The little lean-to place, full of odds and ends of rubbish, and darkened overhead by a string of damp clothes—was intolerably cold in the damp February dawn. The children were blue; the mother felt like ice as Marcella stooped to touch her. Outcast misery could ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... tall trees. On the limb of a pear tree in the orchard one day, I saw firmly fastened, a long, pouch-like nest, woven with rare skill. Securely fastened to the nest by various colored pieces of twine and thread was one of smaller size, like a lean-to added to a house, as if the original nest had been found too small to accommodate the family of young birds when hatched. The oriole possesses a peculiar, sweet, high-whistled trill, similar to this—'La-la-la-la,' which always ends ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas

... the occasion of much eating, drinking and conviviality in the best Philadelphia homes and also in the inns, where it was the custom of that day to entertain considerably. The old Red Lion Inn at North Second and Noble streets, a picturesque gambrel-roof structure of brick with a lean-to porch along the front, is an interesting survival of the inns and taverns of Colonial days, as was also the old Mermaid Inn in Mount Airy, until torn down not long ago. At such gatherings were represented the most brilliant minds this side of the Atlantic, and scintillating ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins

... windows, and was in other ways made unusually comfortable. The Major said that after four years of roughing it, he now meant to take his comfort wherever he could find it, even though it was only on a raft. So the Venture's "shanty" was very different from the rude lean-to or shelter of rough boards, such as was to be seen on most of the timber rafts of the great river. Its interior was divided into two rooms, the after one of which was a tiny affair only six by ten feet. It was furnished with two bunks, one above the other, a table, two ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe

... the town of Antelope and the river Concho is the water-hole. The land immediately surrounding the water-hole is enclosed with a barb-wire fence. Within the enclosure is a ranch-house painted white, a scrub-cedar corral, a small stable, and a lean-to shading the water-hole from the desert sun. The place is altogether neat and habitable. It is rather a surprise to the chance wayfarer to find the ranch uninhabited. As desolate as a stranded steamer on a ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs

... thoroughly snow tight; an excellent place for spare clothing, furs, and ready use stores, and its extension affording complete protection to the entrance porch of the hut. The stables are nearly finished—a thoroughly stout well-roofed lean-to on the north side. Nelson has a small extension on the east side and Simpson a prearranged projection on the S.E. corner, so that on all sides the main building has thrown out limbs. Simpson has almost completed his ice cavern, light-tight ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... was just a sagged lean-to roof on the northern side of the Town Quay, resting against the dead wall of the harbour-master's house, and propped in front by four squat granite columns. This roof often let in rain enough to fill the pits worn in ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... they could see where it rose into a long rolling ridge. They were close at the foot of the rise before they noticed a small creek running over a gravelly bed and, beyond it, the framework of a tent and a lean-to ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott

... the terrace. The girl was not there, but by the gate into the olive-yard, where there was a lean-to shed for tools, they found her sitting on a cask, whittling a piece of wood and talking ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various

... men to frenzied action. There was confusion in the bunkhouse where men collided with their fellows as they plunged about for discarded garments, gun-belts, and boots. But soon they began to straggle out of the door in twos and threes and singly, racing for the corral and for the lean-to where ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer

... the cabin. Kagh circled it until he came to the lean-to at the back that served the Hermit as a storehouse. Here the animal's useful nose caught an alluring scent. The logs of the building were thick, but patient search was at length rewarded by the discovery of a large chink. His keen cutting-teeth at once came into play and the ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer

... there indecisively that a sight met his eye which spurred hesitancy to immediate action. Around the bend far up the stream came sweeping a tangle of wreckage—trees, and brush, and floating timber—and swirling along in its wake was a small lean-to which he recognized as one that had stood on the bank of the river at Melton, the village located five miles above Freeman's Falls. If the water were high enough to carry away this building, it must indeed have risen to a menacing height and ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett

... a hut, or rather a lean-to, that pressed against the side of the mountain, a crazy structure with a single length of stove pipe leaning awry from the roof. And at the door of this house Haw-Haw Langley drew rein and stepped to the ground. The interior of the hut ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand

... had not, he offered to go with me to see it. It turned out to be a "lean-to" in a farmhouse that was in a rather central position with relation to the surrounding farms. The library consisted of about two hundred volumes. The librarian was an elderly woman who lived in the house. One was allowed, she told me, to take out as many books as one wished, and to ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken

... It was a snowy night in late November, 1901, that my friend, Leonidas Hubbard, Jr., asked me this question. All day he and I had been tramping through the snow among the Shawangunk Mountains in southern New York, and when the shades of evening fell we had built a lean-to of boughs to shelter us from the storm. Now that we had eaten our supper of bread and bacon, washed down with tea, we lay before our roaring campfire, luxuriating in its ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace

... cathedral of which the date is not recorded. The triforium in the presbytery was rearranged; the external walls were raised, and the Early English windows of Northwold's work were replaced by much larger ones with Decorated tracery. As the clerestory windows were not altered, the lean-to roof of the triforium was of course made much more flat than before. The graceful flying buttresses, with their elegant pinnacles, are of this same date. The character of Northwold's triforium windows and the corbel table below the parapet may be still seen in two bays on the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting

... had filled my pipe, but discovered that I had no matches. Presently I noticed, on the right-hand side of the road amidst the bracken, a very humble abode. As a matter of fact, it was just what was then known as a "lean-to," the preliminary stage of the farmhouses that were then being built by the settlers. These "lean-tos" were, in the first instance used for living purposes. Later on, when the front parts of the houses were built, they became ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon

... rather a small place tacked on in the manner of a lean-to to the garden side of the house. A large lamp was burning brightly there. The floor was of mere flag-stones but the few rugs scattered about though extremely worn were very costly. There was also there a beautiful sofa upholstered in pink figured silk, an enormous divan ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... by the roadside. The roof is of old tile, once red, now dull from weather; the walls some tone of yellow; the folk are poor. Against it there grows a vigorous plant of jessamine, a still finer rose, a vine covers the lean-to at one end, and tea-plant the corner of the wall; beside these, there is a yellow-flowering plant, the name of which I forget at the moment, also trained to the walls; and ivy. Altogether, six plants grow up the walls of the cottage; and over the wicket-gate there is a rude arch—a framework ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... to a sort of lean-to, or outdoor kitchen. The little addition was covered with vines in leaf and more sweet-peas clambered about its base. Behind it was the living-room with its open door and table already set for dinner. A savory odor issued thence ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond

... frame building near the center of the village, John and Jane Clemens established their household. It was a humble one-story affair, with two main rooms and a lean-to kitchen, though comfortable enough for its size, and comparatively new. It is still standing and occupied when these lines are written, and it should be preserved and guarded as a shrine for the American people; for it was ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... in a deplorable condition. The living are unable to take care of the dead. The majority of the inhabitants of the town were drowned. A lean-to of boards has been erected on the only street remaining in the town. This is the headquarters for the committee that controls the dead. As quickly as the dead are brought to this point they are placed in boxes and then taken to the ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... wasn't the end of it either. When the good woman carried the remains of the breakfast into the lean-to where their food was kept, when they had any, what did she find but a beautiful cut of bacon and a bowl ...
— Miss Mouse and Her Boys • Mrs. Molesworth

... eased, he shouldered his hoe and moved off toward his shanty with the dispirited air of the man who must prepare his own meal. As he passed the lean-to, where his kindling and fuel were kept, he flung the implements inside it, as though glad to be rid of the burden of his labors. Then he passed on round to the front of the building with the lagging step of indifference. ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... "they're still in the lean-to behind the shack; and it would be kind of wiser to crawl back into the adit. The case of detonators was lying bang up ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... and into the little lean-to behind it where the horses were tethered. There she swung her saddle with expert hands, whipped up the cinch, and pulled it with the strength of a man, mounted, and was off up ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand

... snowstorm raged with fury. I took pity on the Eskimos and on Sunday night invited all of them to sleep in our tent, but only Potokomik came, and on Monday morning, when I went out at break of day, I found the other two sleeping under a snowdrift, for the lean-to made of the boat sail had not protected them much. After that they accepted my invitation and joined us ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace

... territory were built "to live in, and not for show...."[20] The following description, by the grandson of one of the original settlers, illustrates the cooperative nature of the enterprise, in addition to giving a clear picture of the type of construction which replaced the early lean-to shelter with which the frontiersman ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf

... the novel refuge there was, for a season, none who could sleep in the bright light from the never-waning flames. There came a time, though, when, in midsummer, Ab grumbled at the heat within his cave and he and Lightfoot built for themselves an outside refuge, made of a bark-covered "lean-to" of long branches propped against the rock. Thus was the first house made. The habitation proved so comfortable that others in the valley imitated it and soon there was a hive of similar huts along the foot of ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... distraction to Maggie's grief, and her tears gradually subsided as she trotted along by Luke's side to his pleasant cottage, which stood with its apple and pear trees, and with the added dignity of a lean-to pigsty, at the other end of the Mill fields. Mrs. Moggs, Luke's wife, was a decidely agreeable acquaintance. She exhibited her hospitality in bread and treacle, and possessed various works of art. Maggie actually ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... room, looking into the rickety wall cupboards, venturing through another door into a second smaller room, really a lean-to, and then going up ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton

... of the plans, the Professor outlined his views: "We have been putting up our structures here in the way usually followed in all rural communities, where there is plenty of room, by first erecting a little shanty, and then adding another room to that, and a little lean-to on the other side, and as the family grows, enclosing the lean-to to make another room, and then adding to that, and so on, until the whole mass makes a more or less picturesque structure, and a fine thing for artists to rave over. But the interior comfort is quite another thing. We should change ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay

... lattice and leaned against its post. Something was wrong with her darling. She knew that as well as if she had been told so by word of mouth, and a dreadful numbness stole over her whole frame. As if in a dream, she saw Aunt Sally emerge from the lean-to, where the great horn was kept, and raised the thing to her lips; but the blast which followed seemed to have been ringing in her ears forever. The silence that succeeded lasted but a moment, yet was like an eternity. ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond

... proceeding, we passed some large huts near the river, which were of a more substantial construction, and also on a better plan than those usually set up by the aborigines of the south. A frame like a lean-to roof had first been erected; rafters had next been laid upon that; and, thereupon thin square portions of bark were laid, like tiles. A fine pond of water being near, we there spancelled our horses and lay down for the night. ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell

... bugged out as soon as he saw my car let down. We picked up a few of his ragtag-and-bobtail, and they're being questioned now, but I doubt if they'll tell us anything we don't know already. The dog had been kept in a lean-to back of the house; it had been removed, probably as soon as Keeluk called in his goon-gang. At least one of the rabbits had been kept on the premises, too, some time ago. No trace of ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr

... A lean-to roof was built against the northern side of the hut, and the ends and open side were boarded up. This building when buttressed by the bricks of coal which formed our fuel, and drifted up with snow by the blizzards, formed an extremely sheltered and even warm stable. The ponies stood in stalls with ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... en tour are almost as numerous and varied as those of its owner. Hence the hotel proprietor must, if he values this clientele, provide something a great deal better than a mere outhouse, an old untidy stable-yard, or a lean-to. ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... talking to Henry Hale Sanderson, a young banker. "He had the advantage of combining two into one, and I think he's done more with my little one, considering the limitations of space, than he has with this big one. Father's has the advantage of size. I tell the old gentleman he's simply built a lean-to for me." ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... will doubtless be surprised to know who has presumed to write and ask a favor of you. Let your memory go back to your days in the Humboldt mines—'62-'63. You will remember, you and Clagett and Oliver and the old blacksmith Tillou lived in a lean-to which was half-way up the gulch, and there were six log cabins in the camp —strung pretty well separated up the gulch from its mouth at the desert to where the last claim was, at the divide. The lean-to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the dirt floor of the lean-to attached to the one room of the cabin, felt a hand upon his shoulder and opened his eyes upon a shadowy figure, blocking up the starlight that came faintly in ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... in lean-to houses with somewhat steep roofs, as such houses are less liable to chill during cold windy weather, and they catch a maximum of the winter sunshine. In a mild winter, Cucumbers may be grown in any kind of house that can be maintained at a suitable temperature, and ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons

... the kitchen table kneading dough. The room was called the kitchen, which it was not, except in winter. The stove was moved out in spring to a lean-to, easily reached through the open door leading to the ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr

... observing what a nondescript lot of chickens they were —not a purebred among them; besides, he noticed many were old, and some had frozen feet and combs. No wonder, he thought, as he glanced at the poorly built hen house that faced the east instead of south—a lean-to built against the side of the barn, with only one small window, and that one on the north end, while the cracks between the upright boards, of which the coop was constructed, were not even covered ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson

... contracted, and his tongue in some sort, insomuch that he spoke weakly, and that it was to be feared he might utterly lose the use of it. Only in consequence of Turner's authoritative representations was Ralegh's chamber changed. In the little garden under the terrace was a lath and plaster lean-to. It had been Bishop Latimer's prison. Since it had been used as a hen-house. Ralegh had already been permitted to employ this out-house as a still room. He was allowed now to build a little room next it, and use ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... beside the track where it entered the bush, and in a rough lean-to, where firewood, tools and saddlery were piled more or less indiscriminately, two unkempt station ponies, saddled and bridled, stood in somnolent attitudes. Huddled hens sheltered from the searching blasts, which swept in eddies of snow, ruffling the feathers of the hens ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... rang for supper they trooped across the road. The kitchen in reality consisted of a mess-room downstairs with a dormitory overhead; the actual kitchen was in a lean-to behind. When the six men had seated themselves at the long trestle covered with oilcloth, the cook entered with a ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner

... entered the cottage after his day's work. He was evidently dead tired, and he had sunk down on a chair beside a table which held tea things and some bread and butter. His wife could be heard moving about in the lean-to scullery behind the living-room. ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... half caves and unearth, as I have done, numerous potsherds, mussel shells, bone awls, flint arrow-heads, split bones of large game animals, and the burnt wood of centuries of camp-fires which tell the tale of the first lean-to shelter used by camping ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard

... came. From that hour to this I have known what the word "home" means, far better than I ever did in my life before. We have two rooms—she built one of them, a little lean-to, with her own hands. And her presence ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston

... Jefferson. The muddy street had vanished to give place to a smooth black roadway, as springy under foot as a forest path, and as clean as the pike after a sweeping summer storm. The shops, with their false fronts and shabby lean-to awnings, were gone, or going, and in their room majestic vastnesses in brick and cut stone were rising, by their own might, as it would seem, out of disorderly mountains of ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... his food sitting on the ground in the place where the food was cooked, which is often a dark lean-to building, attached to the main dwelling. He takes off all his clothing except his dhota, and eats with his fingers in silence. Sociality at such a time is out of place; it diverts the mind from the business in hand, which is that ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin

... a miserable lean-to shack at one side of the clearing, and for a while the motley crew loitered about bandying coarse jests at the expense of the "king." The boy, Rudolph, brought food and water, he alone of them ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... edge of the clearing, under the boughs of the pine trees, a huge pile of trimmed logs of oak, chestnut, pine and fir, with a scarcely smaller heap of cut lengths of boughs and branches. Under a lean-to shed was a small store of cut fire-wood. In a corner of the same shed were four big cornel-wood mauls and eleven good iron wedges, not one of them bearing any sign of ever having been used, but appearing as if fresh from the maker's ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... at the foot of a dense mountain forest, where the shadows lay thick and cold, and there seemed something sinister in the silence all about them. None the less, they soon had a good camp-fire going, and with the axe they proceeded to make a sort of lean-to shelter out of pine boughs. Rob picked out a place near a big fallen log, drove in two crotches a little higher than his head, and placed across them a long pole; then from the log to this ridge-pole they laid others, and thatched it all with pine boughs until they had quite ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough

... more than thankful to hand him over to his mother. I had spilt over myself a bottle of some nameless and abominable brew that I'd mistaken for liniment, and my clothes smelt like carrion; also the lean-to I had lived in was so dirty that I scratched from suspicion all day long, except when I was yawning from a week of hardly closing my eyes. Altogether, as I said, I was dog-tired, if it were not from walking, and I might have stayed at Billy Jones's if I had not been crazy ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... soak for mending his snowshoes. He ran the net he had set at the edge of the eddy for late silvers and took out two fish. Old Tom had pretty well cleaned up the mice in the cellar hole, but they were still burrowing around the sills of the lean-to. Ed took a shovel and opened up a hole so Tom could get under the lean-to floor. He got out his needles, palm, thread, and wax; and ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams

... were orphans; some because they were not. Thus, poor Sammy. The home from which he came was past description. From the outside it looked like a tumble-down shed. Inside there appeared to be but one room, which measured six by twelve feet, and a small lean-to. The family consisted of father and mother and three children. The eldest boy was about twelve, then came Sam, and lastly a wee girl of five, with pretty curly fair hair, but very thin and delicate-looking. ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... my astonishment, I saw here and there proceeding a little smoke; and, on approaching it, I beheld a picture I shall not readily forget. The tenants had been all evicted, and yet, dreadful to say, they were there still! the children nestling, and the poor women huddling together, under a temporary lean-to of straw, which they had managed to stick into the interstices of the walls ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... say, as Tilda guessed, between it and the canal—ran a narrower strip of kitchen garden, planted with leeks, cabbages, potatoes, and ending in a kind of shed—part glass-house, part out-house—built in lean-to fashion against the terminal wall, which overtopped it by several feet. The children in the yard could not look into this garden, for the dividing wall reached far ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... The crook broke down, clammy beads of perspiration all over his pallid face. "I'll tell you right where it's at. In the lean-to of the shack. Southwest corner. ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine

... mountain-side logs long and logs short, and it had seemed a shame to cut the long ones any shorter. Later, when the outside world had crept a little closer to their wilderness—as, go where you will, the outside world has a way of doing—he had built a lean-to shed against the cabin from what lumber there was left after building a ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower

... meeting and sinful enough to talk of it on his return home. No farmer would employ him in all the district round. He tramped about vainly looking for work, grew reckless, and took to drink. Visiting his cottage, consisting of one room and a "lean-to," I found his wife ill with fever, a fever-stricken babe in her arms, the second child lying dead on the bed. In answer to my soft-spoken questions: Yes, she was pining (starving), there was no work. Why did she leave the dead child on the bed? Because she had no other place ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... the banks were steep, and the burn tumbled noisily over a little linn, dashing past the rowan trees that clung there amongst its rocks, and plunging headlong into a deep black pool, stood Donald's hut. Little better than a "lean-to" against a huge rock, it seemed; at one end a rude doorway, filled by a crazy door that stood ajar, walls of turf, windowless and heather-thatched, innocent of chimney, but with an opening that allowed the smoke of his fires to steal up the face of the rock before it dispersed into the ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... His steed paced the lanes of the slums and the weed-grown enclosures within the old ramparts, between the black, lightless cluster of huts, like cow-byres, like dog-kennels. The horseman hammered with the butt of a heavy revolver at the doors of low pulperias, of obscene lean-to sheds sloping against the tumble-down piece of a noble wall, at the wooden sides of dwellings so flimsy that the sound of snores and sleepy mutters within could be heard in the pauses of the thundering ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... cried Phil, as his cousin flung open the door to the tiny lean-to bedroom. Tod's face was pasty white and ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart

... me. I reckon we can find something for you." She picked up the lamp and led the way into the back room. It was the combined living-room, bedroom, and dining-room of the family. One door led to the yard behind the house, the other into a lean-to shanty which served as a kitchen. Tom, by way of precaution, ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop

... For lean-to or single-roofed structures used as forcing-houses for grapes or other fruits or plants, a southern aspect is generally preferred. Our own preference would be a position facing South-East, on account of the advantage gained from the morning sun, which is ...
— Woodward's Graperies and Horticultural Buildings • George E. Woodward

... Vezere, is a vast accumulation of fallen rocks, encumbering the ground for at least thirty-five feet in height under the overhanging cornice. The fallen matter consists of the disintegration of the projecting lip. Against the cliff, under the shelter of the rock, as already said, are cottages with lean-to roofs, internally with the back and with at least half the ceiling composed of the rock. In one of these Lartet and Christy began to sink a pit, beside the owner's bed, and the work was carried on to conclusion by the late Dr. Massenat. The well was driven down through ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... of parleying before it was finally decided to place the body in the forge, which was a wooden lean-to, resting against the north wall of the cottage. There was no direct access from the cottage to the forge, and old Mistress Lambert seemed satisfied that the foreigner should rest there, at any rate until the smith came home, when, mayhap, he would ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy

... parts,—a pretty substantial log-cabin, which dated back to the earliest days of the settlement, and a framed addition, called a lean-to, or "linter." The roof of the old part had been lifted, and tumbled, with some of the upper logs, a mass of ruins, over upon the linter, which had been crushed to the ground by ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge

... decided to fit up as a kitchen. It was a good idea except for the fact that the room was really too small, especially for the type of hospitality that rules in the country. To be sure, by moving a partition a little and by remodeling a small lean-to that adjoined it, sufficient storage and working space was added to make conditions tolerable; but it is at best a makeshift and the answer is, eventually, a properly designed service wing, architecturally in keeping with the 18th century but mechanically modern. Even ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... room, though with what in a house would have been called a sort of "lean-to," large enough to hold a bed. All was, of course, very tidy, but so much neater and, above all, cleaner than the gipsies' van that Duke and Pamela thought it delightful. The boat had been newly repaired and painted, and besides this, Peter's wife—though she could neither read nor ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth

... A little lean-to against the main shack served as a stable; the creek down the hillside was the watering trough. And Donnegan stood by while the big Negro silently tended to the horses—removing the packs and preparing them for the night. Still in silence he produced a small lantern and lighted ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand

... down the sledge, and using the swords and their scabbards as supports, had made a lean-to tent against a warm rock out of the strip of shawl. In this he had strewn juniper branches to make a soft bed, and the children could just creep into it. Then they had the marmot, roasted in its skin, for supper, and all the three were too hungry to ask themselves if marmot flesh was as toothsome ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel

... of loungers was still on the platform when the agent went to the little lean-to beside the station where he kept his horse, saddled and mounted it, and as they saw him ride forth a wicked gleam appeared ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster



Words linked to "Lean-to" :   lean-to tent



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