breadline
nounUK, US /ˈbɹɛdlaɪn/
Etymology From bread + line. In sense 2, referring to the income level at which one can afford to buy bread, a staple food.
1
US A line of people waiting to receive food from a charity.
- I do not think anyone of us can walk by a breadline and see even the most unkempt and raggedy man in the line without saying to himself, "There but for the grace of God."1975, Alex Baskin, The Unemployed (1930-1932), page 4:
- Breadlines and social agencies, while staffing women, employed more men and served more men, making women a minority in the visual landscape.2010, Jan Goggans, California on the Breadlines, page 183:
2
UK, Figuratively The lowest income level at which one's most basic necessities of survival are met; poverty line or subsistence level.
- Every day brings new worries about falling below the breadline.
- […] and she wasn't used to cash, living on the breadline with a kid to bring up.1994 [1993], Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting, London: Minerva, →ISBN, page 249:
3 more examples
- It hurt him to see other good ex-servicemen working their socks off and making no-gooders comfortable while they remained just over the breadline.2004, Toby Bishop, Cry Havoc, page 4:
- It changed her. Having lived below the breadline, having lived with excess, was it about to change once more?2015, Gail Brooking, Coping With Change:
- For poor people that takes them near the breadline, but they still do it.2020, Bernard Knight, Lost Prophecies, page 357:
- Derived terms
- breadliner, below the breadline, on the breadline
- Related terms
- poverty line, soupline