Hand-to-mouth

Origin

from the idiomatic phrase “live from hand to mouth”

Adjective

adjective

1. having barely enough to survive, being close to poverty
• 1879: Henry James, Eugene PickeringShe has been a widow these six or eight years, and has lived, I imagine, in rather a hand-to-mouth fashion.

Related terms

• subsist
• scrape by
• eke out