What does the term to make ends meet mean?

To earn enough income to provide for basic needs: “The workers complained that on their present wages they could hardly make ends meet, let alone enjoy any luxuries.”

How do you use make both ends meet?

1) We’re cutting and contriving to make both ends meet. 2) He’s barely able to can make both ends meet. 3) With high inflation, few can make both ends meet. 4) We are unable to can make both ends meet.

Is make ends meet an idiom?

To make ends meet means “to pay for the things that you need to live when you have little money.” This is a good example of an idiom that is often used in English but that is not transparent in meaning. Here are some examples of how this phrase is used: We had a hard time making ends meet.

What does the idiom struggled to make ends meet?

If you find it difficult to make ends meet, you cannot manage very well financially because you hardly have enough money for the things you need.

Do you earn so much to make both ends meet?

To make both ends meet one should earn the right amount of money that is required. Thus so much to does not fit well with the context of the question, as it is talking about making both the ends meet.

Where did the phrase make ends meet?

It’s often said that it’s from bookkeeping, in which the total at the bottom (“end”) of the column of income must at least match that at the bottom of the expenditure column if one is not to be living beyond one’s income.

Where do both ends meet?

Make ends meet and make both ends meet are phrases that mean to acquire the minimum amount of money necessary to live on. The origins of these phrases, known as early as the 1600s, is murky.

What figure of speech is to make ends meet?

Is make ends meet a metaphor?

Make ends meet – budget tightly – the metaphor was originally to do with wearing a shorter (tighter) belt presumably because you have been frugal, and are eating less, your belt would more easily fasten.

Who barely make ends meet?

If you find it difficult to make ends meet, you can only just manage financially because you hardly have enough money for the things you need. With Betty’s salary they barely made ends meet.

Where do ends meet?

Manage so that one’s financial means are enough for one’s needs, as in On that salary Enid had trouble making ends meet. This expression originated as make both ends meet, a translation from the French joindre les deux bouts (by John Clarke, 1639).

Has difficulty making ends meet?

COMMON If you find it difficult to make ends meet, you find it difficult to pay for the things you need in life, because you have very little money.