breadline

plural breadlines · alternative bread line

1. USA 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

   1 more example

   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. UKfigurativelyThe 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.

   4 more examples

   […] 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

   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

   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

   For poor people that takes them near the breadline, but they still do it.

   2020, Bernard Knight, Lost Prophecies, page 357