breadline

• bread line

bread +‎ line

breadline (plural breadlines)

1. A line of people waiting to receive food from a charity.
   • 1975, Alex Baskin, The Unemployed (1930-1932), page 4:

     I do not think anyone of us can walk by a breadline and see even the most unkempt and raggedy man in the line without saying to himself, "There but for the grace of God."

   • 2010, Jan Goggans, California on the Breadlines, page 183:

     Breadlines and social agencies, while staffing women, employed more men and served more men, making women a minority in the visual landscape.

2. (figurative) Subsistence level.
   • 1993, Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting, page 249:

     […] and she wasn't used to cash, living on the breadline with a kid to bring up.

   • 2004, Toby Bishop, Cry Havoc, page 4:

     It hurt him to see other good ex-servicemen working their socks off and making no-gooders comfortable while they remained just over the breadline.

   • 2015, Gail Brooking, Coping With Change:

     It changed her. Having lived below the breadline, having lived with excess, was it about to change once more?

   • 2020, Bernard Knight, Lost Prophecies, page 357:

     For poor people that takes them near the breadline, but they still do it.

• breadliner
• below the breadline
• on the breadline

• poverty line
• soupline

• bandelier, bandileer, beardline