breadwinner

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

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈbɹɛdˌwɪnɚ/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

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]:

     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.