Word.ws English Dictionary

lean and mean

lean and mean adjective: efficient because of having nothing in excess of what is needed, and single-minded in one's objective.

Adjective

lean and mean (comparative leaner and meaner, superlative leanest and meanest)

  1. (colloquial) efficient because of having nothing in excess of what is needed, and single-minded in one's objective
    • He's a lean and mean fighting machine.

Forms of lean and mean

comparativeleaner and meaner
superlativeleanest and meanest

Questions about lean and mean

What does lean and mean mean?
Lean and mean means efficient because of having nothing in excess of what is needed, and single-minded in one's objective.
What part of speech is lean and mean?
Lean and mean is an adjective.

Words near lean and mean in the dictionary

  1. leams
  2. Leamside
  3. Leamy
  4. Leamys
  5. lean
  6. lean and mean
  7. lean burn
  8. lean client
  9. lean clients
  10. lean finely textured beef
  11. lean in

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lean and mean (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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