Dictionary

uplean en · VERB

Etymology

From up- + lean.

Meanings

1. (ambitransitive, literary) To lean or incline upward; to cause (something) to lean upward.
   • 1856, Gold-Pen (pseudonym), “My Cottage” in Poems, Philadelphia: Lippincott, 2nd edition, pp. 188-189, 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.
   • 1902, George Macdonald Major, “A Chinatown Idyll” in Lays of Chinatown, New York: The Lloyd Press, 2nd edition, p. 64, A rakish hat was tilted o’er his eyes. A cigarette, with intermittent fire, Upleaned to meet it from his stern set lips.
   • […] the snow which covered the glacier was melted into upleaning, icy blades which were extremely difficult to cross […] 1912, John Muir, chapter 14, in The Yosemite,, New York: Century, published 1920, page 244:
   • 1895, Orelia Key Bell, “And every morning as I passed her bower” in Poems, Philadelphia: Rodgers, p. 181, […] that liquid cadency Seep’d thro’ the casement to the birds and me, Who upleaning drank, and drinking upleaned more.
   • 1834, Albert Pike, “Sunset” in Prose Sketches and Poems Written in the Western Country, Boston: Light & Horton, pp. 192-193, 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,
2. (intransitive, obsolete, rare) To lean (on something).
   • […] thus his carelesse time / This shepheard driues, vpleaning on his batt, / And on shrill reedes chaunting his rustick rime, 1591, Ed[mund] Sp[enser], “Virgils Gnat”, in Complaints. Containing Sundrie Small Poemes of the Worlds Vanitie. […], London: […] William Ponsonbie, […], →OCLC:
   • With that vpleaning on her elbow weake, / Her alablaster brest she soft did kis, 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, page 322:

Forms