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The Collaborative International Dictionary
To make both ends meet

End \End\ ([e^]nd), n. [OE. & AS. ende; akin to OS. endi, D. einde, eind, OHG. enti, G. ende, Icel. endir, endi, Sw. ["a]nde, Dan. ende, Goth. andeis, Skr. anta. [root]208. Cf. Ante-, Anti-, Answer.]

  1. The extreme or last point or part of any material thing considered lengthwise (the extremity of breadth being side); hence, extremity, in general; the concluding part; termination; close; limit; as, the end of a field, line, pole, road; the end of a year, of a discourse; put an end to pain; -- opposed to beginning, when used of anything having a first part.

    Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof.
    --Eccl. vii. 8.

  2. Point beyond which no procession can be made; conclusion; issue; result, whether successful or otherwise; conclusive event; consequence.

    My guilt be on my head, and there an end.
    --Shak.

    O that a man might know The end of this day's business ere it come!
    --Shak.

  3. Termination of being; death; destruction; extermination; also, cause of death or destruction.

    Unblamed through life, lamented in thy end.
    --Pope.

    Confound your hidden falsehood, and award Either of you to be the other's end.
    --Shak.

    I shall see an end of him.
    --Shak.

  4. The object aimed at in any effort considered as the close and effect of exertion; ppurpose; intention; aim; as, to labor for private or public ends.

    Losing her, the end of living lose.
    --Dryden.

    When every man is his own end, all things will come to a bad end.
    --Coleridge.

  5. That which is left; a remnant; a fragment; a scrap; as, odds and ends.

    I clothe my naked villainy With old odd ends stolen out of holy writ, And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.
    --Shak.

  6. (Carpet Manuf.) One of the yarns of the worsted warp in a Brussels carpet. An end.

    1. On end; upright; erect; endways.
      --Spenser

    2. To the end; continuously. [Obs.]
      --Richardson.

      End bulb (Anat.), one of the bulblike bodies in which some sensory nerve fibers end in certain parts of the skin and mucous membranes; -- also called end corpuscles.

      End fly, a bobfly.

      End for end, one end for the other; in reversed order.

      End man, the last man in a row; one of the two men at the extremities of a line of minstrels.

      End on (Naut.), bow foremost.

      End organ (Anat.), the structure in which a nerve fiber ends, either peripherally or centrally.

      End plate (Anat.), one of the flat expansions in which motor nerve fibers terminate on muscular fibers.

      End play (Mach.), movement endwise, or room for such movement.

      End stone (Horol.), one of the two plates of a jewel in a timepiece; the part that limits the pivot's end play.

      Ends of the earth, the remotest regions of the earth.

      In the end, finally.
      --Shak.

      On end, upright; erect.

      To the end, in order.
      --Bacon.

      To make both ends meet, to live within one's income.
      --Fuller.

      To put an end to, to destroy.

Usage examples of "to make both ends meet".

I sympathise with her, for I do the same, only Jonathan and I will start in life in a very simple way, and shall have to try to make both ends meet.

By 1846 the prospect of being able to make both ends meet in Concord was so unpromising that to relieve himself of the anxiety occasioned by his small debts and his keen sense of obligation he obtained appointment as surveyor of customs at Salem.

His mother had been a Miss Trotter, of Chicago, and it was on her dowry that the Runnymedes contrived to make both ends meet.

Jefferson found it very difficult to make both ends meet and send her son to a good school.

I know you are not a rich man and have to work hard to make both ends meet, and this year we have had a long drought.

Not being half out of your mind all the time, wondering how the hell to make both ends meet.

He was a pleasant-faced young man of twenty, who had drifted to Chicago from his country home in Indiana, and found it hard to make both ends meet on a salary of nine dollars a week.