Knowing Your “Leans”

The word lean has several definitions in English, let’s explore some of them. The first definition of the word lean has to do with opinions or beliefs. Which way "a person leans" often tells you much about them, even about how they might think or feel about certain things.

People often accuse U.S. President George Bush of leaning too far to the right, of being ‘too much’ of a conservative | foto: MF DNES

Angličtina na iDNES.cz
VŠECHNY LEKCE ZDE

---

---

Examples: "Our boss tends to lean towards the conservative side of things marketing wise, I don’t think he’s going to approve this new advertising campaign" or "People often accuse U.S. President George Bush of leaning too far to the right, of being ‘too much’ of a conservative."

Lean
The next definition of the word lean has to do with when something is physically thin or perhaps is missing something "extra" such as fat. Examples:

"He is now lean and trim, ever since he started exercising and eating right six months ago" or "I eat nothing but lean meats nowadays, I have cut out much of the fat in my diet to improve my health."

When you go shopping in stores to purchase meats like ground beef or what Americans will call hamburger, quite often there are three kinds available, each of which has varying degrees of fat in them or what is euphemistically called "filler" by the food industry.

Hamburger or ground beef or minced meat which is lean, has far less fat in it than regular or normal or "full fat" meat or beef or pork does.

In a similar way, if a person has a "lean steak" or a "lean piece of pork" this is supposed to be a piece of meat which has far less fat in it than otherwise would normally exist.

For meats which contain less than 10% fat, you may see them called "extra lean" or referred to as an "extra lean cut," it all depends on the person, location or entity where you are.

The word "lean" can also be a bit on the relative side of things.

In Texas for example, "lean" beef tends to have a bit more fat on it than its counterpart over in California.

This is due to the dietary and cultural differences which exist between these two states.

                                                      Part II next week.

  Joke of the Day: Comments about Irony

"Neither irony nor sarcasm is argument."

This means that making ironic comments or being sarcastic, is no substitute for either the truth, or addressing the issues or facts.

Unfortunately, many people avoid dealing with issues "straight up" and one way they avoid them is by making sarcastic or ironic comments instead.

Under such circumstances, one is really avoiding the relevant issues or even possibly the truth, depending on the subject."Truth is what we often run away from. We forget that it can always out run us, and catch us up in its arms any time that it wishes to do so."

Angličtina vychází od pondělí do pátku.

Najdete ji také v bezplatném deníku Metropolitní expres.

Kalovi pište na adresu: [e-mail]