hand-to-mouth

From hand +‎ to +‎ mouth.

• Audio (General Australian):

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hand-to-mouth

1. Involving immediate consumption (especially of food) with no provision for the future; having barely enough to survive, in poverty
   • 1879, Henry James, Eugene Pickering:

     She has been a widow these six or eight years, and has lived, I imagine, in rather a hand-to-mouth fashion.

   • 2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Quarians: Economy Codex entry:

     The Migrant Fleet has little economic base, operating in a state of perpetual "hand-to-mouth". While quarian ships include light manufacturing and assembly plants, they lack heavy industries such as refining and shipbuilding. The fleet has tankers for water purification and oxygen cracking, but the space-intensive nature of agriculture limits food production. A single disaster could destroy the fragile balance.

• live paycheck to paycheck
• subsist
• scrape by
• eke out