- 1僅能糊口；三餐不繼
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.
「hand-to-mouth」形容生活只夠勉強過一天，錢和食物都剛好夠用，沒有多餘，也存不下來。這種情況可以說 「a hand-to-mouth existence」（僅能糊口的生活），也可以說 「live hand to mouth」（勉強度日）。
字面的畫面是食物一拿到手就送進嘴裡，什麼都沒剩下來收存。它不是在講用手吃東西。這個詞常用來形容經濟拮据的家庭、待業中的學生，或只能顧到明天的人。
From the word’s history
From hand + to + mouth.
由 hand、to、mouth 三個字組成。
組成From hand + to + mouth.
原始詞典資料1 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，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
- 1
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.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。