breadwinner

Noun

breadwinner (plural breadwinners)

1. The primary income-earner in a household.
   • At one side lay the little town of Hollingford, into a street of which Mr. Gibson's front door opened; and delicate columns, and little puffs of smoke were already beginning to rise from many a cottage chimney where some housewife was already up, and preparing breakfast for the bread-winner of the...1865, Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, Wives and Daughters, Chapter I
   • The female breadwinners who are making more than their working husbands are in a whole different income bracket; their median household income is $80,000.
     The role of men is evolving even in the three-quarters of dual-parent families in which fathers are the primary breadwinners. […] Those fathers...2013 June 3, Brad Harrington, “Behind the Data on Breadwinner Mothers”, in The New York Times

   Synonyms:

   breadearner