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Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

breadline en · NOUN

Pronunciation

  • (US) audio
  • /ˈbɹɛdlaɪn/ (UK, US)

Etymology

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

Meanings

  1. (US) A line of people waiting to receive food from a charity.
    • 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:
    • 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:
  2. (UK, figuratively) The lowest income level at which one's most basic necessities of survival are met; poverty line or subsistence level.
    • 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:
    • For poor people that takes them near the breadline, but they still do it. 2020, Bernard Knight, Lost Prophecies, page 357:
    • 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:
    • 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:

Forms

SpellingFeaturesLabelsSource
bread line alternative lexicographic
breadlines Number=Plur lexicographic

Deriveds

on the breadline · breadliner · below the breadline

Relateds

soupline · poverty line

Translations (8)

pl kolejka po żywność (line for food from charity) · fi leipäjono (line for food from charity) · tr yemek kuyruğu (line for food from charity) · de Brotschlange (line for food from charity) · de Existenzminimum (subsistence level) · fi toimeentuloraja (subsistence level) · tr ekmek kuyruğu (line for food from charity) · pl granica ubóstwa (subsistence level)