lean-to
Americannoun
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lean-tos
plural
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a shack or shed supported at one side by trees or posts and having an inclined roof.
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a roof of a single pitch with the higher end abutting a wall or larger building.
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a structure with such a roof.
noun
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a roof that has a single slope with its upper edge adjoining a wall or building
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a shed or outbuilding with such a roof
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of lean-to
1425–75; late Middle English; noun use of verb phrase lean to
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Our home was a compact, two-story terraced house with a back garden and a little lean-to greenhouse.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 21, 2026
At night she sleeps in an unheated lean-to.
From New York Times ● May 17, 2022
The painters, in less than half an hour, fabricated a moveable lean-to out from a sheet of heavy translucent plastic and lumber from the trailer.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 16, 2021
If you're outside and caught in the storm, find shelter and try to stay dry and cover all exposed body parts, exercise or build a lean-to, windbreak or snow cave and fire for heat.
From Fox News ● Oct. 26, 2021
The largest was unfinished and made from unplastered cement blocks with a tin roof, while two were just lean-to constructs of roofing sheets with nothing more, and the last an open, untidily thatched hut.
From "Flying Through Water" by Mamle Wolo
By Tuesday, more bamboo and tarpaulins had been brought into the camp, to build new shelters for people crowding under poles and lean-tos.
From New York Times ● Mar. 7, 2023
Her attention was fixed on a highway underpass nearby, where a handful of people were living in tents and cardboard lean-tos.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 14, 2022
Now there are at least 70 - lean-tos, makeshift shelters and tents of different sizes - spreading out from a restroom building at what was once a popular picnic pavilion.
From Washington Times ● Feb. 16, 2020
The county has yet to come up with a plan to gain control of hundreds of “alternative rentals” — tepees, freight containers, crude lean-tos, Sherpa huts, travel trailers and yurts.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 10, 2020
Wisps of smoke were beginning to rise from the chimneys of several small log lean-tos along the roadway.
From "The Witch of Blackbird Pond" by Elizabeth George Speare
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
