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feast-or-famine

[ feest-er-fam-in ]

adjective

  1. characterized by alternating, extremely high and low degrees of prosperity, success, volume of business, etc.:

    artists who lead a feast-or-famine life.



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Idioms and Phrases

Also, either feast or famine . Either too much or too little, too many or too few. For example, Free-lancers generally find it's feast or famine—too many assignments or too few , or Yesterday two hundred showed up at the fair, today two dozen—it's either feast or famine . This expression, which transfers an overabundance or shortage of food to numerous other undertakings, was first recorded in 1732 as feast or fast , the noun famine being substituted in the early 1900s.
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Example Sentences

However, much variation can be expected in an animal whose physiology must be adapted to a feast-or-famine existence.

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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.

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feast one's eyes onfeat