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If you have a hand-to-mouth existence, you have only just enough money and food to get through the day — nothing extra, nothing saved. People also say live hand to mouth. The picture behind the words is food going straight from the hand to the mouth, with nothing left to put away. It is not about eating with your fingers. You will hear it about families with little money, students between jobs, or anyone who cannot plan past tomorrow. From hand + to + mouth.
僅能糊口；三餐不繼
原始詞典資料1 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
hand-to-mouthadj
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Involving immediate consumption (especially of food) with no provision for the future; having barely enough to survive, in poverty
- She has been a widow these six or eight years, and has lived, I imagine, in rather a hand-to-mouth fashion.
- The Migrant Fleet has little economic base, operating in a state of perpetual "hand-to-mouth". While quarian ships include light manufacturing and assembly plants, they lack heavy industries such as refining and shipbuilding. The fleet has tankers for water purification and oxygen cracking, but the space-intensive nature of agriculture limits food production. A single disaster could destroy the fragile balance.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。