breadline
UK/ˈbɹɛdlaɪn/
breadline noun: a line of people waiting to receive food from a charity.
Noun
breadline (plural breadlines)
- A line of people waiting to receive food from a charity.
- 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."1975, Alex Baskin, The Unemployed (1930-1932), page 4
- Breadlines and social agencies, while staffing women, employed more men and served more men, making women a minority in the visual landscape.2010, Jan Goggans, California on the Breadlines, page 183
- 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.
- […] and she wasn't used to cash, living on the breadline with a kid to bring up.1994 [1993], Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting, London: Minerva, →ISBN, page 249
Examples of breadline in a sentence
- 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.2004, Toby Bishop, Cry Havoc, page 4:
- Having lived below the breadline, having lived with excess, was it about to change once more?2015, Gail Brooking, Coping With Change:
- For poor people that takes them near the breadline, but they still do it.2020, Bernard Knight, Lost Prophecies, page 357:
Forms of breadline
| plural | breadlines |
|---|---|
| alternative form | bread line |
Origin of breadline
From bread + line. In sense 2, referring to the income level at which one can afford to buy bread, a staple food.
Words formed from breadline
Questions about breadline
- What does breadline mean?
- Breadline means a line of people waiting to receive food from a charity.
- How do you use breadline in a sentence?
- 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.
- What part of speech is breadline?
- Breadline is a noun.
- How do you pronounce breadline?
- Breadline is pronounced /ˈbɹɛdlaɪn/ (UK).
- What is the plural of breadline?
- The plural of breadline is breadlines.
Words near breadline in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: breadline (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-breadline.wav.
Cite this entry: “breadline.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/breadline. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.