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eked
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Eked

Eke \Eke\ ([=e]k), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Eked; p. pr. & vb. n. Eking.] [AS. [=e]kan, [=y]kan; akin to OFries, [=a]ka, OS. ?kian, OHG. ouhh[=o]n to add, Icel. auka to increase, Sw. ["o]ka, Dan. ["o]ge, Goth. aukan, L. augere, Skr. ?jas strength, ugra mighty, and probably to English wax, v. i. Cf. Augment, Nickname.] To increase; to add to; to augment; -- now commonly used with out, the notion conveyed being to add to, or piece out by a laborious, inferior, or scanty addition; as, to eke out a scanty supply of one kind with some other. ``To eke my pain.''
--Spenser.

He eked out by his wits an income of barely fifty pounds.
--Macaulay.

Wiktionary
eked

vb. (en-past of: eke)

Usage examples of "eked".

No birds were in sight, though the forward edge of feather-thin clouds eked southward high above.

Even with Bobby Fiore, she spoke a curious mixture of Chinese, English, and the little devils’ tongue, eked out with much gesture and dumb show.

He couldn’t even tell the two groups apart by their gear: many Russian partisans bore captured German equipment, while about an equal number of Hitler’s finest eked out their own supplies with Soviet stocks.

When the pressure on the back of his neck finally eased up a bit, he was able to see that the car was bumping through sparsely settled slum areas, where only a few rock rats eked out a living in stale air, without piped water or electricity.