Synonyms:
support, keep, livelihood, living, bread_and_butter, sustenance
Meaning: the financial means whereby one lives; "each child was expected to pay for their keep"; "he applied to the state for support"; "he could no longer earn his own livelihood"
Usage examples
He was, however, unsuccessful in his endeavours to secure a comfortable livelihood.
When he grew old enough, he watched the flocks of the people of Mecca, and gained a meager livelihood by doing this.
Working on the soil that is at once their livelihood and their home, they do not consciously reckon the value of the labor they are putting upon it.
He trades upon sorrow and draws a livelihood from misfortune. He transmutes tears into treasure, and from nakedness and hunger garbs himself in clean linen and develops the round of his belly.
Here is a body of men relieved, at least in the higher stages of savagery, from the need of earning their livelihood by hard manual toil, and allowed, nay, expected and encouraged, to prosecute researches into the secret ways of nature.
Little children with tearful faces pressed against the pane watch and wait. Their means of livelihood, their home, their happiness is gone. Fatherless children, broken-hearted women, sick, disabled and dead men--this is the wage of war.
They would fall upon a town unprotected by walls, and consisting of a mere collection of villages, and would plunder it; indeed, this came to be the main source of their livelihood, no disgrace being yet attached to such an achievement, but even some glory.
Then a little later it was realized that Newton was poor, that he still had to teach for his livelihood, and that though the Crown had continued his fellowship to him as Lucasian Professor without the necessity of taking orders, yet it was rather disgraceful that he should not be better off.
There, I wore a dark calico dress and sun-bonnet, both made by poor Mrs. McCutchen of the Donner Party, who had to take in sewing for a livelihood; but to the Seminary, I should wear grandpa's gift, a costly alpaca, changeable in the sunlight to soft mingling bluish and greenish colors of the peacock.
But--come now--I do love open dealing--I am myself open as the day--did you not take to the church as a profession, in which you might eat a piece of bread--as somebody says in your own blessed Bible--dry enough bread it may be, for the old lady is not over-generous to her younger children--still a gentlemanly sort of livelihood?"