breadlinen.
/ˈbrɛdlʌɪn/, U.S. /ˈbrɛdˌlaɪn/ Originally U.S.
1. With the. The lowest level of income at which it is possible to afford the basic necessities of life; subsistence level. Frequently in on (also below) the breadline.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > possession > poverty > [noun] > poverty level > subsistence level
subsistence level1837
breadline1888
1888 M. J. Simpelaar in Proc. 6th Ann. Session National Convent. Chiefs Bureaus Statistics Labor U.S. 22 Bread is the primitive, natural motive of all labor... Next in importance come clothing and shelter. The three comprise the immediate necessaries of life—the condition I wish to denote by the term, ‘the bread line’.
1912 Portsmouth (Ohio) Daily Times 12 Aug. 3/4 In this era of high prices the wages of $1.50 per day is generally admitted to be below the bread line.
1929 Dundee Courier 7 Nov. My life has been spent among people..close to the bread line.
1993 I. Welsh Trainspotting (1994) 249 She wasn't used to cash, living on the breadline with a kid to bring up.
2019 News Shopper (Nexis) 23 May Child poverty in Lewisham has risen over the last year with more than 30,000 kids living on or below the breadline.
2. A queue of people waiting to receive free bread or other food as charity. Also in extended use.The early use of breadline in this sense was particularly associated with the large queues which formed outside Fleischmann's Vienna Bakery on Broadway and 10th Street in New York in the 1890s–1910s, after its owner, Louis Fleischmann (1836–1904), instituted the practice of distributing unsold loaves at midnight to those in need (see quot. 1897).
ΘΚΠ
the mind > possession > poverty > [noun] > poor person > poor person in receipt of relief > queue of
breadline1894
soup line1973
1894 World (N.Y.) 16 Jan. 9/2 They weren't the men you would expect to find in a bread line. They weren't red-nosed or drink-marked tramps. Their crooked, hooked and hardened fingers showed they were used to work.
1897 Fulcrum (Topeka, Kansas) 22 Oct. 2/2 That night we saw the hungry crowd known as the ‘bread-line’, standing for hours in front of Fleischman's [sic] bakery..waiting for the hour of mid-night when a half loaf of bread, left over from the previous day's sales, was given to each man as he passed the gate. For months and months that line has formed shortly after ten o'clock.
1938 Life 4 Apr. 12 (caption) The Hoover Depression had spectacular offshoots—breadlines, hunger marchers, bank runs, rioting farmers, rabble-rousers.
2017 Yorks. Post (Nexis) 1 Nov. The impact of poor diets in the UK means for too many the reality is the modern day breadlines of food banks, which means little fresh food.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2020; most recently modified version published online December 2021).
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n.1888