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Definition
2024
hand-to-mouth
hand-to-mouth
See also:
hand to mouth
English
Adjective
hand
-
to
-
mouth
having
barely
enough
to
survive
, being close to
poverty
1879:
Henry James,
Eugene Pickering
She has been a widow these six or eight years, and has lived, I imagine, in rather a
hand-to-mouth
fashion.
Translations
having barely enough to survive
Estonian:
peost
suhu
elada
Latvian:
(
dzīvot
)
no
rokas
mutē
(
(live) from hand to mouth
)
Livonian:
pivst sūzõ
jellõ
(
live from palm to mouth
)
Related terms
subsist
scrape by
eke out
Etymology
from the idiomatic phrase “live from hand to mouth”
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