cost of living

1. 1.

   average cost of basic necessities of life (as food and shelter and clothing)

   “a rise in the cost of living reflects the rate of inflation”

   Broadercost

Questions about cost of living

What does cost of living mean?

cost of living means "average cost of basic necessities of life (as food and shelter and clothing)".

Is cost of living a common word?

cost of living is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.