Billy, during these lean days, must be supporting life on bread, bean soup, and water.

These are lean days in this depressed southern Utah town of 652 people.

In leaner days, scrambling for outside work had been a necessity.

She had never known a lean day in her life.

Those were lean and dire days, but the country didn't give up on its schools.

In a touch left from the lean, early days, the office is still furnished pool-house style.

You can stay here, or travel and use it as a haven to come back to in lean days.

But the war came, and her death, and these lean days.

I don't want to part with it, but these are lean days.

It was typical of John during those lean days.