make-ends-meet
Chunk: make ends meet
Meaning & Usage
Make ends meet is an idiom that means to have just enough money to pay for basic living expenses (like rent, food, and bills). It is almost always used in contexts discussing financial difficulty, inflation, or low wages.
🧲 Common Collocates
- Struggling Contexts: struggle to make ends meet, barely make ends meet, hard to make ends meet.
- Assistance: take a second job to make ends meet, help them make ends meet.
💬 Contextual Examples
- With inflation so high, many families are struggling to make ends meet.
- When I was in college, I had to work two part-time jobs just to make ends meet.
- Even with both of them working full-time, they can barely make ends meet.
🎴 Interactive Web Practice
Practice 1: Rent is so expensive here that it's hard to make ______ meet.
Answer:
ends Practice 2: He took a weekend shift just to make ends ______.
Answer:
meet Practice 3: The single mother was struggling to ______ ends meet on a minimum wage salary.
Answer:
make