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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

“He’s below the desired NFL mark on height and weight for an outside cornerback, which could hurt his draft slotting. Smith-Wade is a sticky man-cover corner when he gets into the receiver and he has closing burst that can make up for lost ground. He can be feast-or-famine in zone coverage, as he tends to look to jump short throws and loses his deep-cover responsibility. He could end up outplaying his draft slot due to his ball skills, competitiveness and athletic traits.”

Indeed, though he remains a feast-or-famine presence in the middle of the Dodgers lineup, Muncy has felt a better balance with his swing and approach to start this season.

He says with California’s “feast-or-famine” hydrology growing more intense, the state needs the equivalent of a larger “savings account,” and smarter ways of banking water — such as making room for seasonal flooding among Central Valley farmlands to replenish groundwater.

They would get a cheque in the post every time a movie or show they worked on was re-broadcast and that allowed actors to survive between projects in the business, which has always been a feast-or-famine job.

From BBC

So there’s a feast-or-famine quality to the entertainment industry, especially for the vast majority of writers who aren’t in the profession’s top tier.

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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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