Learn English – Lean in and lean out

contemporary-englishmeaningword-usage

There was an article titled “Forget Leaning In, Let's Talk about Leaning Out” in Forbes magazine (April 2. 2014) in which the author, Caroline Mayer says:

“I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard way too much about Sheryl Sandberg and her new book, Lean In, encouraging women to be more assertive, especially in the workplace. At this stage in my life, I simply want to Lean Out.”

I was in understanding both “lean in” and “lean out” simply refer to bodily actions as defined by Oxford English Dictionary: to move the top part of your body in a particular direction. Example: Don’t lean out of the window,” until I read Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead.

I understand now the word, “lean in" is used to mean to get aggressively involved in business and ambitious career development, and “lean out” as its opposite word.

As far as I checked Google Ngram, both “lean in” and “lean out” have been used since well before 1840 with predominant incidences of “lean in” over “lean out.” However, usage of “lean in” made a remarkable increase coming into 2000 (from 0.0000085329% in 1980 to 0.0000118571% in 2000), possibly for its extended meaning.

I’m curious to know (1) from around what time the word “lean in” started to be used in Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” context other than proper “body actions,” and (2) whether the word, “Lean out” is now commonly understood as a pair word of Sandberg’s “Lean in.”

Best Answer

Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead is a 2013 book written by Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook. According to the New York Times (Making a Word Meme):

“Lean in” is the idiom of the moment for headline writers, the Twitterati and New Yorker cartoonists. ...An avalanche of publicity accompanying the book’s release in March helped the expression gain a toehold in the cultural vernacular, but the phrase seems to have taken on a life of its own, even among (perhaps especially?) those who have not read the book.

The phrase had a life before Ms. Sandberg used it. It was frequently invoked in sports (lean in to the slope, lean in to the wave) and evolved into a metaphor for embracing risk, said Ben Zimmer, executive producer of the Visual Thesaurus and Vocabulary.com, and language columnist for The Boston Globe.

Ben Zimmer writes:

In winter sports like snowboarding and skiing, you might want to "lean into the turn." And "leaning in" is also seen as a good move in sports as diverse as rowing, boxing, football, baseball, horse-riding, riflery, motorcycling, and running.

From these different activities comes a general picture of "leaning in" (or "leaning forward") as a stance that suggests embracing risk and not shying away from difficulty or obstacles in one's path. It's not surprising, then, that "leaning in" should get applied to the business world.

He stated that the earliest use he could find to this metaphorical transfer comes in a 1941 issue of Princeton Alumni Weekly.

Dave Walton of Wordorigins.org states:

A possible progenitor for the Sandberg's use of the phrase is from interactive television, which has for at least 15 years been describing the difference between 'lean back' and 'lean forward' to denote the difference between TV and the Internet.

That might explain the Ngram takeoff in 1965 (with lean forward leading the pack).

Is lean out paired with lean in? Most likely, seeing the above.

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