Word.ws English Dictionary

make ends meet

make ends meet verb: to have enough money to cover expenses; to get by financially; to get through the pay period (sufficient to meet the next payday).

Verb

make ends meet (third-person singular simple present makes ends meet, present participle making ends meet, simple past and past participle made ends meet)

  1. (idiomatic) To have enough money to cover expenses; to get by financially; to get through the pay period (sufficient to meet the next payday).
    • ... a schoolmaster, whose income being small, he was fain to keep a glass of good liquor for the entertainment of passengers, by which he made shift to make the two ends of the year meet.1748, Tobias Smollett, “The Adventures of Roderick Random”, in The Miscellaneous works of Tobias Smollett, page 18
    • Although most of the poor and displaced in Khartoum struggle to make ends meet, a very small number not only find work, but form small co-operatives.1996, Chris Peters, Sudan: A Nation in the Balance, page 42

make ends meet meaning in Tamil

make ends meet in Tamil

கைக்கும் வாய்க்கும்

Examples of make ends meet in a sentence

  • 'Cause it's a bitter sweet symphony that's life / Trying to make ends meet, you're a slave to money then you die1997, Richard Ashcroft, “Bitter Sweet Symphony”, performed by The Verve:
  • Investigators discover that Captain Ospina was forced to take a second job, moonlighting in a bar, in order to make ends meet for his family.2011 August 19, Carl Knutson, “The Plane That Flew Too High” (41:00 from the start), in Mayday: Air Disaster, season 11, episode 2, spoken...

Forms of make ends meet

third-person singular presentmakes ends meet
present participlemaking ends meet
past participlemade ends meet
pastmade ends meet

Origin of make ends meet

Unknown. Perhaps originally referred to the ends of rope meeting, signifying continuity and therefore security and stability. Perhaps shifting later to refer to the attempt at making money last from one pay period to the next (i.e. the ends), thereby leaving no gap or break in the availability of funds. Compare French joindre les deux bouts (literally “join the two ends”) with the same meaning. The form make both ends meet is attested from the 17th century, and was the more common form until the early-to-mid 20th century.

Questions about make ends meet

What does make ends meet mean?
Make ends meet means to have enough money to cover expenses; to get by financially; to get through the pay period (sufficient to meet the next payday).
What is make ends meet in Tamil?
Make ends meet in Tamil is கைக்கும் வாய்க்கும். See Make ends meet meaning in Tamil.
How do you use make ends meet in a sentence?
'Cause it's a bitter sweet symphony that's life / Trying to make ends meet, you're a slave to money then you die
What part of speech is make ends meet?
Make ends meet is a verb.
What is the past tense of make ends meet?
The past tense of make ends meet is made ends meet.

Words near make ends meet in the dictionary

  1. make default
  2. make do
  3. make do and mend
  4. make down
  5. make due
  6. make ends meet
  7. make every effort
  8. make eyes
  9. make faces
  10. make fair weather
  11. make fast

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: make ends meet (page history and authors); make ends meet (Tamil Wiktionary) (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: En-au-make ends meet.ogg.

Cite this entry: “make ends meet.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/make_ends_meet. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.