breadwinner
Americannoun
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breadwinners
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of breadwinner
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
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“This particular division of private and public, housewife and breadwinner … was built on a flow of cheap fossil fuels and car culture,” she told The 19th.
From Salon ● Aug. 27, 2026
Advice for a burned-out breadwinner: A letter writer who’s outwardly successful by all measures—a wife, kids, a well-paying job—can’t stop dreaming about leaving it all behind.
From Slate ● Aug. 20, 2026
Williams’s older brother used the press to launch a modest job-printing business, but in 1861 he joined the Union Army, leaving the household without a breadwinner.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 30, 2026
Like many of the workers arrested, he was the primary breadwinner for his family.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 6, 2026
Katherine was now the mother and father, the love and the discipline, the carrot and the stick, and the sole breadwinner.
From "Hidden Figures" by Margot Lee Shetterly
Marwa and her siblings had to be the primary breadwinners to help the family survive.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 6, 2026
Men in this generation may also have experienced financial strain differently because they were more likely to have been the primary breadwinners in this cohort born in 1946.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 2, 2026
The result: Most breadwinners still have jobs, and they are still spending.
From MarketWatch ● Jan. 10, 2026
"Up to 300 women work during the peak harvesting season. Many are sole breadwinners who can now take care of their families," she says.
From BBC ● Sep. 27, 2025
Many of them are the chief breadwinners of the family.
From Women Workers in Seven Professions by Edith J. Morley
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
