hand-to-mouth

1. 1.

   providing only bare essentials

   “a hand-to-mouth existence”

   Similarmeager

Questions about hand-to-mouth

What does hand-to-mouth mean?

hand-to-mouth means "providing only bare essentials".

How many syllables are in hand-to-mouth?

hand-to-mouth has 3 syllables: hand--to--mouth. The stress falls on "hand-".

Is hand-to-mouth a common word?

hand-to-mouth 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.