hand to mouth
2
6.3
- idiom
- Informal
:
vivir al día
- 'Fifty-seven years in this country and still we're living hand to mouth.'
- living hand to mouth
Examples
-
Millions of children wander Latin America's streets, living from hand to mouth.
Academic text (1993) -
In the irrigated fields of As Safi, these refugees survive hand to mouth, picking tomatoes for $11 a day.
-
I wanted to have one last try to work out why I kept ending up in this state of living from hand to mouth.
Blog text (10) -
But I'm living hand to mouth right now.
-
You can offer a discount for prompt payment, but unless you are living hand to mouth, why do that?
Academic text (2009) -
Michael and I have always lived hand to mouth, though from the outside it doesn't look that way.
Fiction book (2001) -
It is said that the poor, because they live from hand to mouth, cannot afford to wait for resource-conserving investments to pay off.
Academic text (1994) -
Millions of children wander Latin America's streets, living from hand to mouth.
-
He'd been raised poor and was used to living hand to mouth.
Synonyms
11
5.5
Having little or no savings and needing each payday to pay bills
1
6.8
To live with only enough money to pay for basic needs and no savings
Very poor and only able to pay for basic needs like food
A person who has little money and cannot buy basic things
Antonyms
How Secure
Surface Forms
Morphology
hand + to + mouth
The expression evokes the concrete image of bringing food ‘from hand to mouth’, so a learner who knows the words can infer a sense of immediate consumption and lack of reserves. However, the financial/living-from-day-to-day extension is metaphorical and not fully predictable from the parts alone, making the idiom partially but not wholly transparent.
Etymology
Hand to mouth comes from the image of a person who eats as soon as food is in their hand, with nothing saved. That's why it now means 'having only just enough money or food to live', with no savings.