Adjective

(er)

Slender or thin; not well filled out; not plump; shrunken; lean.

* Meager and lank with fasting grown. - .

* Who would not choose ... to have rather a lank purse than an empty brain? - .

* Blacks in the fields, lank'' and stooped, their fingers spiderlike among the bolls of cotton. - 1985 , chapter 1.

(of hair) Straight and flat; thin and limp. (often associated with being greasy)

* Lank hair, long, thin hair. -

(obsolete) languid; drooping.

* Who, piteous of her woes, reared her lank head. -

(Macaulay)

Adjective

(er)

With little or no possessions or money.

:

Of low quality.

:

*, chapter=10

, title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=He looked round the poor room, at the distempered walls, and the bad engravings in meretricious frames, the crinkly paper and wax flowers on the chiffonier; and he thought of a room like Father Bryan's, with panelling, with cut glass, with tulips in silver pots, such a room as he had hoped to have for his own.}}

To be pitied.

:

*

*:Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly [on a newspaper] he would pass a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent, miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with careworn, troubled Ellen.

*{{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)

, chapter=15 citation , passage=Mr. Campion sighed. ‘Poor man,’ he said. ‘He sees his great sacrifices rejected by the gods, and so, no doubt, all the Misses Eumenides let loose again to plague him.’}}

Deficient in a specified way.

:

Inadequate, insufficient.

:

*(w) (1600-1666)

*:That I have wronged no man will be a poor plea or apology at the last day.

Free from self-assertion; not proud or arrogant; meek.

*(Bible), (w) v.3

*:Blessed are the poor in spirit.