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be on the breadline
(redirected from breadline)

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Wikipedia 0.04 sec.
be/live on the breadline  (British & Australian)
to be very poor
Usage notes: In America, breadlines were very poor people standing in a line waiting for free food provided by the government.
Most families of the unemployed are on the breadline. How many elderly people in Britain are living on the breadline?


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THE BEDRAGGLED MEN IN A SHUFFLING BREADLINE are frozen forever in bronze at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington.
Likewise, the statement that "most Europeans lived on the verge of poverty or even below the breadline (13)" seems curiously present-minded and out of tune with how those same Europeans would have perceived their own position in a society linked not principally to economic markers--like van Leeuwen's non-existent "breadline"--but to dense networks of rights, duties, and privileges that are at best indirectly economic in character.
The Second Term Room is subdivided into two facing chambers, the first punctuated by a set of bronze statues executed by George Segal-"The Fireside Chat," "The Breadline," and "The Appalachian Couple"--depicting the experiences of ordinary folks during the Great Depression.
 
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