Word.ws English Dictionary

lived paycheck to paycheck

lived paycheck to paycheck is the simple past and past participle of live paycheck to paycheck.

Meaning of live paycheck to paycheck

Verb

live paycheck to paycheck (third-person singular simple present lives paycheck to paycheck, present participle living paycheck to paycheck, simple past and past participle lived paycheck to paycheck)

  1. (US, idiomatic) To have the entirety of one's earnings consumed by living expenses, thus having nothing left over to save; to make just enough (money, etc.) to survive; to scratch by.
    • But what does all this mean for the men and women who live from paycheck to paycheck? Prices have skyrocketed to boost the cost of living for the worker to about double the pre-war level.1948, George Morris, How to Make Your Vote Count: The Communist Position on the Issues and Candidates in the 1948 Elections, New York, N.Y.: New Century Publishers, →OCLC, page 4

Questions about lived paycheck to paycheck

What is lived paycheck to paycheck the simple past and past participle of?
Lived paycheck to paycheck is the simple past and past participle of live paycheck to paycheck.

Words near lived paycheck to paycheck in the dictionary

  1. lived one's best life
  2. lived one's own life
  3. lived one's truth
  4. lived out
  5. lived over the brush
  6. lived paycheck to paycheck
  7. lived paycheque to paycheque
  8. lived rent free in someone's head
  9. lived rent free in someone's mind
  10. lived rent-free in someone's head
  11. lived rent-free in someone's mind

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lived paycheck to paycheck (page history and authors); live paycheck to paycheck (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.

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Cite this entry: “lived paycheck to paycheck.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lived_paycheck_to_paycheck. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.