Word.ws English Dictionary

makes ends meet

makes ends meet is the third-person singular simple present indicative of make ends meet.

Meaning of make ends meet

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

Questions about makes ends meet

What is makes ends meet the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Makes ends meet is the third-person singular simple present indicative of make ends meet.

Words near makes ends meet in the dictionary

  1. makes contact with
  2. makes conversation
  3. makes do
  4. makes do and mends
  5. makes down
  6. makes ends meet
  7. makes eyes
  8. makes faces
  9. makes fair weather
  10. makes fetch happen
  11. makes fish of one and flesh of another

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: makes ends meet (page history and authors); make ends meet (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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