HAND-TO-MOUTH • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Hand-to-mouth

"Hand-to-mouth" Quotes from Famous Books

... all the birds, myriads in number and scores in species, go when they leave the North in the winter? A small minority lags, not superfluous, for we are delighted to have them, but in a subdued, pinched, and hand-to-mouth mode of existence in marked contrast to their summer life and perceptibly marring the pleasure of their society. They flock around our homes and assume a mendicant air that is a little depressing. Unlike the featherless tramps, ...

— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... Nicol, and Duncan,—were, it must be admitted, an idle and graceless set, living for the most part a hand-to-mouth, amphibious, curlew-like kind of life, and far more given to aimless voyages in boats not belonging to them than inclined to turn their hand to any honest labour. But this must be said in their excuse that no boy or lad born in the village of Erisaig could by any means whatsoever ...

— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black

... seemed at first more fortunate. An opening was found for him at Sheffield, where he was apprenticed to a rope-maker, a cousin of his mother's. This man died before Sandy was more than halfway through his time, and the youth went through a period of hardship and hand-to-mouth living which ended at last in the usual tramp to London. Here, after a period of semi-starvation, he found it impossible to get work at his own trade, and finally drifted into carpentering and cabinet-making. ...

— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

Words linked to "Hand-to-mouth" : scrimpy, stingy, meager, meagre, meagerly