bare necessities
Just sufficient resources, with nothing to spare. For example, The room was furnished with just the bare necessities—bed, table, chair. This idiom uses bare in the sense of “mere, and nothing else,” a usage dating from about 1200.
Words Nearby bare necessities
The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
How to use bare necessities in a sentence
Each month, he receives ¥300 ($50) in welfare payments, an amount insufficient to cover the bare necessities.
There is a huge shortage of the bare necessities for living any sort of decent life.
Surely a third class passenger is entitled at least to the bare necessities of life.
Third class in Indian railways | Mahatma GandhiHe denied himself all but bare necessities and cigars, even the two small luxuries he valued—scent and good writing paper.
The Life of Mazzini | Bolton KingBut in Bohemia occasions preponderated when indulgence in anything beyond bare necessities was an impossibility.
Vie de Bohme | Orlo Williams
We were not much better off in the bare necessities of life.
Life in an Indian Outpost | Gordon CasserlyWhy, at one time (and not so long ago) we were without the bare necessities of life itself.
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