Breadwinning
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The earning of a household's primary income. uncountable
"This could have occurred nowhere but in England, where men and sea interpenetrate, so to speak—the sea entering into the life of most men, and the men knowing something or everything about the sea, in the way of amusement, of travel, or of bread-winning."
Example
More examples"This could have occurred nowhere but in England, where men and sea interpenetrate, so to speak—the sea entering into the life of most men, and the men knowing something or everything about the sea, in the way of amusement, of travel, or of bread-winning."
Etymology
From bread + winning. Compare West Frisian breawinning (“livelihood”), Dutch broodwinning (“profession”).
More for "breadwinning"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.