breadwinning
nounEtymology From bread + winning. Compare West Frisian breawinning (“livelihood”), Dutch broodwinning (“profession”).
1
The earning of a household's primary income.
- This could have occurred nowhere but in England, where men and sea interpenetrate, so to speak—the sea entering into the life of most men, and the men knowing something or everything about the sea, in the way of amusement, of travel, or of bread-winning.1898 September, Joseph Conrad, “Youth: a Narrative”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXIV, number DCCCCXCV, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publication Co., page 309:
- And the key issues that both batterers and battered women identify as triggers to battering are men's successes in breadwinning and the bedroom – the two Bs.2007, Angela Hattery, Earl Smith, African American families, page 104:
- Related terms
- breadwinner