Meaning of Idiom ‘Make Ends Meet’
To make ends meet means to have enough money to pay your basic bills and expenses; to have an income that enables one to meet one’s minimum survival needs. 1,2,3
Often misspelled as make ends meat.
Sentence Examples
“It’s not right that a person should work a full-time job and still not make ends meet.”
“I can’t make ends meet on this salary and I’m not going to work two jobs and spend more time away from my family.”
“She walked dogs after school to help make ends meet.”
“With grocery prices skyrocketing and rent at an all-time high, nobody in the neighborhood can make ends meet.”
Origin
This idiom was originally ‘make both ends meet.’ The ends are presumably one’s expenses and income and the wish is to have the sum total be equal or ‘meet.’ The English phrase may have come from the French phrase joindre les deux bouts.
Another explanation comes from novelist Tobias Smollet, who, in Roderick Random (1748), rendered the idiom as ‘make the two ends of the year meet.” This phrase is thought to refer to splicing the ends of ropes together to save money onboard a ship. 4
References
- Ammer, Christine. American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013.
- Heacock, Paul. Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms]. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010.
- Brenner, Gail. Webster’s New World American Idioms Handbook. John Wiley & Sons, 2011.
- Ammer, Christine. American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013.