uplean

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English[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From up- +‎ lean.

Verb[edit]

uplean (third-person singular simple present upleans, present participle upleaning, simple past and past participle upleant or upleaned)

  1. (transitive, intransitive, literary) To lean or incline upward; to cause (something) to lean upward.
    • 1834, Albert Pike, “Sunset” in Prose Sketches and Poems Written in the Western Country, Boston: Light & Horton, pp. 192-193,[1]
      The western sky is wallen
      With shadowy mountains, built upon the marge
      Of the horizon, from eve’s purple sheen,
      And thin gray clouds, that daringly uplean
      Their silver cones upon the crimson verge
      Of the high zenith,
    • 1856, Gold-Pen (pseudonym), “My Cottage” in Poems, Philadelphia: Lippincott, 2nd edition, pp. 188-189,[2]
      I forced the slowly yielding door
      That ope’d on Sabbath morn no more,
      And found all that the winds withstood,
      Was an upleaning piece of wood.
    • 1895, Orelia Key Bell, “And every morning as I passed her bower” in Poems, Philadelphia: Rodgers, p. 181,[3]
      [] that liquid cadency
      Seep’d thro’ the casement to the birds and me,
      Who upleaning drank, and drinking upleaned more.
    • 1902, George Macdonald Major, “A Chinatown Idyll” in Lays of Chinatown, New York: The Lloyd Press, 2nd edition, p. 64,[4]
      A rakish hat was tilted o’er his eyes.
      A cigarette, with intermittent fire,
      Upleaned to meet it from his stern set lips.
    • 1912, John Muir, chapter 14, in The Yosemite,[5], New York: Century, published 1920, page 244:
      [] the snow which covered the glacier was melted into upleaning, icy blades which were extremely difficult to cross []
  2. (intransitive, obsolete, rare) To lean (on something).

Anagrams[edit]