breadwinner

English

Etymology

From bread +‎ winner, where to win = to earn. Compare West Frisian breawinning (“livelihood”, literally “bread-winning”), Dutch broodwinning (“livelihood”).

Pronunciation

  • (General American) IPA(key): /ˈbɹɛdˌwɪnɚ/
  • Audio (Southern England):(file)

Noun

breadwinner (plural breadwinners)

  1. The primary income-earner in a household.
    Synonym: breadearner
    • 1865, Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, Wives and Daughters, Chapter I:
      At one side lay the little town of Hollingford, into a street of which Mr. Gibson's front door opened; and delicate columns, and little puffs of smoke were already beginning to rise from many a cottage chimney where some housewife was already up, and preparing breakfast for the bread-winner of the family.
    • 2013 June 3, Brad Harrington, “Behind the Data on Breadwinner Mothers”, in The New York Times‎[1], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 23 December 2025:
      The female breadwinners who are making more than their working husbands are in a whole different income bracket; their median household income is $80,000.
      The role of men is evolving even in the three-quarters of dual-parent families in which fathers are the primary breadwinners. […] Those fathers reported that being a breadwinner was less important to them than providing their children with love and emotional support, being present and involved in their child’s life, or being a good mentor and role model.
    • 2018, Katherine Reynolds Lewis, The Good News About Bad Behavior: Why Kids Are Less Disciplined Than Ever — And What to Do About It, page 34:
      More significantly, as women flooded into the workforce and divorce rates climbed, the model of a breadwinner father and a stay-at-home mother disintegrated.

Translations

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