subsistence

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   The food, money, or other things a person needs simply to stay alive.

   The tiny wage barely covered their daily subsistence.

2. 2
   noun

   The state of surviving on the smallest possible amount of resources.

   Many families there live at the level of bare subsistence.

From Middle English subsistence; partly from Middle French subsistence (modern French subsistance) and partly from its etymon Late Latin subsistentia (“substance, reality, in Medieval Latin also stability”), from Latin subsistēns, present participle of subsistere (“to continue, subsist”). Perhaps also partly from subsist + -ence.

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