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breadline

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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See also: bread line

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From bread +‎ line. In sense 2, referring to the income level at which one can afford to buy bread, a staple food.

Pronunciation

  • (UK, US) IPA(key): /ˈbɹɛdlaɪn/
  • Audio (US):(file)

Noun

breadline (plural breadlines)

  1. (US) A line of people waiting to receive food from a charity.
    • 1975, Alex Baskin, The Unemployed (1930-1932), page 4:
      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."
    • 2010, Jan Goggans, California on the Breadlines, page 183:
      Breadlines and social agencies, while staffing women, employed more men and served more men, making women a minority in the visual landscape.
  2. (British, figurative) 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.
    • 1994 [1993], Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting, London: Minerva, →ISBN, page 249:
      […] and she wasn't used to cash, living on the breadline with a kid to bring up.
    • 2004, Toby Bishop, Cry Havoc, page 4:
      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.
    • 2015, Gail Brooking, Coping With Change:
      It changed her. Having lived below the breadline, having lived with excess, was it about to change once more?
    • 2020, Bernard Knight, Lost Prophecies, page 357:
      For poor people that takes them near the breadline, but they still do it.

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