lean-to

plural lean-tos · alternative leanto

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

   From a lean-to of bark an old lubra hurriedly emerged.

   1937, Ion L. Idriess, Over the Range, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, published 1947, page 248

   4 more examples

   Now we was in the lean-to, and heard trampings close by outside. So we crept to the door, and Tom stopped us there and put his eye to the crack, but couldn't make out nothing, it was so dark

   1884 December 10, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade) […], London: Chatto & Windus, […], →OCLC

   His shirt, an ordinary Crimean flannel, was exquisitely clean, and outside the "lean-to" another was drying on a bush.

   1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 161

   Philander went into the next room, which was just a lean-to hitched on to the end of the shanty, and came back with a salt mackerel that dripped brine like a rainstorm. Then he put the coffee pot on the stove and rummaged out a loaf of dry bread and some hardtack.

   1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter VIII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC

   He set out to chink the cracks of the lean-to, built that spring for Miss Charlotte’s bedroom.

   1950, Dorothy M. Johnson, Prairie Kid; in Indian Country, London: Corgi, 1961, page 49