Survive with barely enough money or resources to meet basic needs. Having no savings or security, spending income immediately on necessities as it's earned.
This phrase dates to the 1500s and creates a vivid image of the most basic human survival - food going directly from hand to mouth with nothing left over. It originally described the poorest people who had no ability to store food or wealth.
The phrase captures poverty with startling physical immediacy - you can almost see the desperate, continuous motion of survival. It reduces human existence to its most basic biological function, making economic hardship viscerally real through body language.
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