lean toward something
lean
adjective[ -er/-est only ]
us/lin/

leanadjective[-er/-est only] (THIN)

(of a person) thin and in good physical condition:
Her body is lean, taut, athletic.
When you describe meat as lean, you mean that it does not have much fat in it:
lean hamburger meat
A lean period is a time during which there is not enough of something, esp. money or food:
It is a particularly lean year for science funding.
When you say that a company or business is lean, you mean that it has the fewest employees it needs to do its work.

lean | Business English

lean
adjective
uk /liːn/us
MANAGEMENT
using fewer employees or less money in order to decrease waste, while continuing to operate effectively:
Companies are downsizing, aiming to be leaner and more efficient, with demands on employees for greater productivity.
With the application of lean management principles, suppliers and distributors have streamlined their processes.
lean enterprise/operation/organizationWhen it comes to costs, they pride themselves on running a lean operation.
get/become leanerThe pack-houses and their workers have had to become leaner.
lean retailers/suppliers
if a period of time is lean, there is not enough money or business at that time:
lean period/times/years
Funding has been increased to some programs suffering from several years of lean budgets.
if costs, goods for sale, materials, or quantities of workers are lean, they are very low, or kept as low as possible:
Cold weather across the U.S. signaled a surge in demand for natural gas products at a time when inventories are uncomfortably lean.
Working quickly and cheaply, with lean staffs and even leaner budgets, contract manufacturers have long played a supporting role in the computer business.

leanness

noun[ U ]
Leanness means eliminating all waste, including time, and ensuring a smooth and predictable output.

Examples of lean

lean
I leaned out of window for fresh air.
He too leans beside me, watching me write.
One miniature fresco fragment shows a woman, perhaps a priestess, leaning rail; behind her is a net hanging across a window.
The furniture elements occupy the house much like the occupants - lounging about, leaning against walls or columns, or sitting around the edge of the room.
Another is to arrange identical schedules in separate components that are followed by different components signaling reinforcer rates that are either richer or leaner.
Even describing examples of these two putative selection processes cogently, leans heavily on the contrast with multi-step selection.
What video games have to teach us about leaning and literacy.
The young man leans for ward to ask the old man what time it is, but the old man does not answer.
Indeed, the political empowerment of previously disenfranchised groups makes them a more permanent and potent force leaning against reversal.
One of those things just leaning out of the window, trying to free itself so it can fly above the trees.
Linear regression was used to analyse the relationship between leaning, turning up, resprouting, dead primary stem and the abundance of individuals in the forest.
A resprouting but leaning stem gives up canopy space whereas a reoriented stem that turns upward can reclaim canopy space.
There is a high prevalence of leaning trees in the study area that have either resprouted or undergone turning up.
There are fleeting moments where fragments become phonemes and a vowel sound leans towards the possibility of speech.
A question, for example, can be signaled by raised eyebrows, widened eyes, and a slight leaning forward of the head.
See all examples of lean
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.