LIVELIHOOD

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does livelihood mean? 

• LIVELIHOOD (noun)
  The noun LIVELIHOOD has 1 sense:

1. the financial means whereby one lives

  Familiarity information: LIVELIHOOD used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• LIVELIHOOD (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The financial means whereby one lives

Classified under:

Nouns denoting possession and transfer of possession

Synonyms:

bread and butter; keep; livelihood; living; support; sustenance

Context example:

he could no longer earn his own livelihood

Hypernyms ("livelihood" is a kind of...):

resource (available source of wealth; a new or reserve supply that can be drawn upon when needed)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "livelihood"):

amenities; comforts; conveniences; creature comforts (things that make you comfortable and at ease)

maintenance (means of maintenance of a family or group)

meal ticket (a source of income or livelihood)

subsistence (minimal (or marginal) resources for subsisting)

 Context examples 

You get your livelihood from the masters of society, and whoever feeds a man is that man's master.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

“What!” said Mrs. Weston, “have not you finished it yet? you would not earn a very good livelihood as a working silversmith at this rate.”

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

A person qualified to be engaged in activity directed at preservation of mental and physical health by diseases prevention and treatment as a source of livelihood.

(Health Care Professional, NCI Thesaurus)

Such losses will be dramatic as most countries in the Pacific are dependent on fisheries for food and livelihoods.

(Pacific island fish migrating to cooler seas, SciDev.Net)

What is to me a means of livelihood is to him the merest hobby of a dilettante.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

That would significantly affect the economic resources supplied by the lake and the livelihoods of approximately 40 million people living in the Lake Victoria Basin.

(Environmental change in Africa: Will it lead to a drying Lake Victoria?, National Science Foundation)

Alas! said the dog, my master was going to knock me on the head, because I am old and weak, and can no longer make myself useful to him in hunting; so I ran away; but what can I do to earn my livelihood?

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

I was going on to tell him of another sort of people, who get their livelihood by attending the sick, having, upon some occasions, informed his honour that many of my crew had died of diseases.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

I came down again to my dinner; and even the slow comfort of the meal, and the orderly silence of the place—which was bare of guests, the Long Vacation not yet being over—were eloquent on the audacity of Traddles, and his small hopes of a livelihood for twenty years to come.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The decline in fish diversity downriver, coupled with the impact of climate change on rain patterns, is a concern for riverine communities who depend on fishing for their livelihoods and on fish as a source of protein.

(Amazon fish ‘face new threats’, SciDev.Net)