to eke out
11
7.5
- phrasal verb
- /ik aʊt/
:
hacer durar
- The pioneers eked out a living not thanks to but in spite of national developmental projects.
- eke out a living
- eke out an existence
It roots you because the best you can do is to eke out your days unfulfilled.
- It roots you because the best you can do is to eke out your days unfulfilled.
- And then that contour shade is just eking out that little bit of depth on that outside corner.
- So in other words, they have to control for the other parts of the trilogy basically and then eke out this effect.
- And so we really do have to, we do really do have to figure out how to eke out the oil that we've got left much more efficiently than we than we have up to now.
Examples
-
Millions of people have been marginalized and are struggling to eke out survival in the informal sector.
Blog text (26) -
Back in my university days in Japan, I eked out a living teaching English conversation part-time.
Blog text (22) -
If we could find work, then we as kids worked so we could eke out a living.
Fiction book (1994) -
With a rising demand for gold, the people have increasingly turned to mining to eke out a better living in this area.
-
Cyn, you know what it takes just to eke out enough time to be with your kids every day.
Fiction book (1999) -
The poor economy has killed the family's hopes of being able to eke out a reasonable living.
Academic text (1997) -
The villagers till their small plots of land to eke out an existence.
Academic text (1997) -
He'd brought work with him and somehow had to eke out time for the Myerstone Tire account over the weekend.
Fiction book (1998) -
We'd stock up on groceries, and you know, the next week or two we'd somehow eke out a living.
-
Despite the challenging weather conditions, they managed to eke out a modest profit from their harvest.
Synonyms
15
8.4
To make food or money last longer by using it carefully
2
4.9
To get something with great effort
1
5.8
Live with only enough money for basic needs
How Long
102
4.0
96
3.9
11
7.5
10
5.1
121
3.1
49
3.7
Surface Forms
Morphology
eke + out
The sense 'to manage with difficulty / make resources last longer' is directly derived from combining 'eke' (to prolong or increase by frugal use) with the particle 'out', which here signals extension or stretching. Although 'eke' is low-frequency, if a learner knows both constituents the meaning follows a regular compositional pattern rather than an idiomatic shift, so it is predictable.
Etymology
Eke out comes from an old word eke meaning 'to increase' by small amounts. Imagine adding small bits to a tiny supply so it lasts longer; that's why eke out means 'to make something last' or 'to manage with difficulty'.