英和和英

語源

From bread +‎ line. In sense 2, referring to the income level at which one can afford to buy bread, a staple food.

発音

• (英国発音, 米国発音) IPA: /ˈbɹɛdlaɪn/

名詞

breadline (plural breadlines)

1. (US) A line of people waiting to receive food from a charity.
   • 1975, Alex Baskin, The Unemployed (1930-1932), page 4:

     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."

   • 2010, Jan Goggans, California on the Breadlines, page 183:

     Breadlines and social agencies, while staffing women, employed more men and served more men, making women a minority in the visual landscape.

2. (British, figurative) The 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.

   • 1994 [1993], Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting, London: Minerva, →ISBN, page 249:

     […] and she wasn't used to cash, living on the breadline with a kid to bring up.

   • 2004, Toby Bishop, Cry Havoc, page 4:

     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.

   • 2015, Gail Brooking, Coping With Change:

     It changed her. Having lived below the breadline, having lived with excess, was it about to change once more?

   • 2020, Bernard Knight, Lost Prophecies, page 357:

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

派生語

• breadliner
• below the breadline
• on the breadline

参考

• poverty line
• soupline

アナグラム

• bandelier, bandileer, beardline