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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
lean-to
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ After a second helping, Alice took Mungo into the lean-to.
▪ Blackbirds have raised a brood in the lean-to where we keep the logs.
▪ I spend three months of every year in a lean-to.
▪ Sorted out the test roster and Greg has worked wonders with the lean-to.
▪ They worked all day in the mud; at night they slept on compacted mud under hessian lean-tos.
▪ We lay on our mattress, propped against the back wall of the lean-to.
▪ We leaned back against the irregular planks of the lean-to.
▪ When I came back from fishing yesterday you were beside me in the lean-to gutting the catch with me.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Lean-to

Lean-to \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.
    --De Foe.

  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.

Lean-to

Lean-to \Lean"-to`\, a. (Arch.) Having only one slope or pitch; -- said of a roof.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
lean-to

"building whose rafters pitch against another building or wall," mid-15c., from lean (v.) + to.

Wiktionary
lean-to

n. A shelter with a sloped roof; also a building with a similar construction attached to the side of a building as an extension.

WordNet
lean-to

n. rough shelter whose roof has only one slope

Wikipedia
Lean-to

A lean-to is a type of simple structure originally added to an existing building with the rafters "leaning" against another wall. Free standing lean-to structures are generally used as shelters. One traditional type of lean-to is known by its Finnish name laavu.

Usage examples of "lean-to".

Dead branches swept down to the ground, and Coll, forcing his way between them, found he was able to break off the ones inside, until he had a very serviceable lean-to.

Enough wreckage had washed ashore so a rude lean-to had been fashioned from sails and broken spars, but the wood that had drifted ashore from the ship was too wet to do more than smolder on the fire.

There was a crude but huge wooden lean-to, with great straw mats and large, crudely woven wool blankets, and an outside barbecue pit of some sort, with hot coals and a rotisserie of smelted iron over it.

While she still had the firelight, Dallandra set up her own lean-to, divided her blankets twixt herself and Niffa, and unlaced her pair of saddle-bags to make two pillows.

Favored by smugglers and corsairs, the zebeck had no half deck, and no great cabin and stem galley, just a lean-to tent on the quarter-deck for the captain and his demi-goddess.

Favored by smugglers and corsairs, the zebeck had no half deck, and no great cabin and stern galley, just a lean-to tent on the quarter-deck for the captain and his demi-goddess.

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 clatter of his blows.

The sturdiest shelter consisted of a lean-to built of sticks covered by a roof woven of reeds, their clothing was little more than grass skirts and cloaks, cunningly braided together, and they had only one cooking pot among them as well as baskets and sharpened sticks fashioned into spears or fishing forks.

Sleeping under a crude lean-to, squashed into a soggy mass between a large, wet husband and an equally large, equally wet nephew, listening to rain thrump on the branches overhead while fending off the advances of a immense and thoroughly saturated dog, is slightly less so.

Across the way, Drunk Town was just smoking rubble and twisted remains, a few isolated fires still smoldering, temporary lean-tos, tarpaulin or canvas shelters.

The lean-to served as a wood store and corral, having a hollow-log watertrough beneath it and a hayrack fitted to the wall of the cabin.

Pa stamped the snow from his feet and hung his old coat with his cap on the nail by the lean-to door.

We gathered a quantity of the dry sword-bladed soapweeds, and with one of the blankets made a lean-to shelter against the steep hillside.

Enough wreckage had washed ashore so a rude lean-to had been fashioned from sails and broken spars, but the wood that had drifted ashore from the ship was too wet to do more than smolder on the fire.

The men made flexible mats of the large, soft-stemmed bulrushes, then used them to extend the lean-to and to wrap around themselves while they dried their wet clothes.