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.
RELATED CONTENT
How Do You Write In The Subjunctive Mood?The subjunctive mood is a way of talking about unreal or conditional situations. You can also use it to describe desires, wishes, needs, or intentions. You’ll often see it as the format for idioms and expressions. Unreal Situations The most common use of the subjunctive mood to express imaginary or hypothetical situations. It’s often used in if clauses. To show the subjunctive mood, you should …
Nearby words
bare, bare bones, bare hands, with one's, bare infinitive, bare lymphocyte syndrome, bare necessities, bare one's soul, bare one's teeth, bare-bones, bare-knuckle, bare-naked
The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary
Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.