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make ends meet
- To earn enough income to provide for basic needs: “The workers complained that on their present wages they could hardly make ends meet, let alone enjoy any luxuries.”
Idioms and Phrases
Manage so that one's financial means are enough for one's needs, as in On that salary Enid had trouble making ends meet . This expression originated as make both ends meet , a translation from the French joindre les deux bouts (by John Clarke, 1639). The ends , it is assumed, allude to the sum total of income and expenditures. However, naval surgeon and novelist Tobias Smollett had it as “make the two ends of the year meet” ( Roderick Random , 1748), thought to go back to the common practice of splicing rope ends together in order to cut shipboard expenses.Example Sentences
But there was nothing frivolous about this undertaking: to see how long she could make ends meet working everyday hospitality and custodial jobs in the wake of the Clinton administration’s dismantling of the social safety net.
According to a study published by Credit Karma, Americans have never relied more on tax refunds to make ends meet.
She added that big-box stores have the unfair advantage of being able to absorb costs related to the tariffs, while local businesses are already struggling to make ends meet.
Carole Gandy, cabinet member for adults, health and wellbeing, said the authority understood times were hard for many and "sometimes it's difficult to make ends meet".
I think you characterize the city in a fascinating way, and I don’t think you’re denigrating at all, but where she is in her life — she’s an adjunct professor, trying to make ends meet, scraping things together — she feels very dissatisfied, very much searching.
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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