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LIVELIHOOD
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The financial means whereby one lives
Example:
he could no longer earn his own livelihood
Synonyms:
bread and butter; keep; livelihood; living; support; sustenance
Classified under:
Nouns denoting possession and transfer of possession
Hypernyms ("livelihood" is a kind of...):
resource (available source of wealth; a new or reserve supply that can be drawn upon when needed)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "livelihood"):
amenities; comforts; conveniences; creature comforts (things that make you comfortable and at ease)
maintenance (means of maintenance of a family or group)
meal ticket (a source of income or livelihood)
subsistence (minimal (or marginal) resources for subsisting)
Context examples:
Left unchecked, TR4 may well cause the Cavendish to go extinct, threatening the livelihoods of 400 million people around the world who rely on this banana variety as food or as a source of income.
(GM tech expands with more crops to more countries, SciDev.Net)
Rising temperatures will cause at least a third of the ice in the Himalayas to vanish by the end of the century, endangering the lives and livelihoods of nearly two billion people who are dependent on glacier-fed rivers for their water resources.
(Bulk of Himalayan glaciers could vanish by 2100, SciDev.Net)
He told her of what he had been doing, and of his plan to write for a livelihood and of going on with his studies.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
But his wife said, Pray let the poor faithful creature live; he has served us well a great many years, and we ought to give him a livelihood for the rest of his days.
(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)
For anything that I can perceive to the contrary, it is still probable that my children may be reduced to seek a livelihood by personal contortion, while Mrs. Micawber abets their unnatural feats by playing the barrel-organ.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Some were undone by lawsuits; others spent all they had in drinking, whoring, and gaming; others fled for treason; many for murder, theft, poisoning, robbery, perjury, forgery, coining false money, for committing rapes, or sodomy; for flying from their colours, or deserting to the enemy; and most of them had broken prison; none of these durst return to their native countries, for fear of being hanged, or of starving in a jail; and therefore they were under the necessity of seeking a livelihood in other places.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
He wanted a career, not a livelihood, and he was content to make immediate sacrifices for his ultimate again.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
But what can we do with him? said the shepherd, he has not a tooth in his head, and the thieves don’t care for him at all; to be sure he has served us, but then he did it to earn his livelihood; tomorrow shall be his last day, depend upon it.
(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)
Hence it follows of necessity, that vast numbers of our people are compelled to seek their livelihood by begging, robbing, stealing, cheating, pimping, flattering, suborning, forswearing, forging, gaming, lying, fawning, hectoring, voting, scribbling, star-gazing, poisoning, whoring, canting, libelling, freethinking, and the like occupations: every one of which terms I was at much pains to make him understand.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Nor did he know that the Transcontinental was the sole livelihood of the editor and the business manager, and that they could wring their livelihood out of it only by moving to escape paying rent and by never paying any bill they could evade.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
