Etymology

Adjective

1. Slender or thin; not well filled out; not plump; shrunken; lean.
   • Meager and lank with fasting grown. - Jonathan Swift.
   • Who would not choose ... to have rather a lank purse than an empty brain? - Isaac Barrow.
   • Blacks in the fields, lank and stooped, their fingers spiderlike among the bolls of cotton. - 1985 McCarthy, Blood Meridian, chapter 1.
2. (of hair) Straight and flat; thin and limp. (often associated with being greasy)
   • Lank hair, long, thin hair. - Thomas Babington Macaulay
3. languid; drooping.
   • Who, piteous of her woes, reared her lank head. - John Milton