Word.ws English Dictionary

lean-witted

lean-witted adjective: lacking in intelligence or shrewdness.

Adjective

lean-witted (comparative more lean-witted, superlative most lean-witted)

  1. (archaic) Lacking in intelligence or shrewdness.
    • And thou a lunatic lean-witted fool
      Presuming on an ague's privilege1595 December 9 (first known performance), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Richard the Second”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to...
    • there is not a street boy who holds your horse but has a laugh, and a good one, at the lean-witted, dull Bavarian1877, Walter Thornbury, “Athens under King Otho”, in The Gentleman's Magazine

Forms of lean-witted

comparativemore lean-witted
superlativemost lean-witted

Questions about lean-witted

What does lean-witted mean?
Lean-witted means lacking in intelligence or shrewdness.
What part of speech is lean-witted?
Lean-witted is an adjective.

Words near lean-witted in the dictionary

  1. lean-back
  2. lean-backs
  3. lean-burn
  4. lean-to
  5. lean-tos
  6. lean-witted
  7. Leana
  8. leanback
  9. leanbacks
  10. leanchoiliid
  11. leanchoiliids

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lean-witted (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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