Talk:make a living

earn a living
Both are SoP, in contrast to such expressions as bring home the bacon and even pay the bills/pay the rent/put food on the table, which at least are idiomatic inasmuch as they are metonymies. DCDuring TALK 21:22, 10 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete, or redirect if we absolutely must (which is dismissing the readership as idiots who can't separate words by spaces). Equinox ◑ 21:41, 10 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep. From a non-native-English perspective, make a living at least isn't entirely obvious.  The common JA gloss for EN, for instance, is , but this verb cannot be used sensibly with any of the common glosses for  (though I suppose some kind of allusion to Frankenstein might be possible).  That would seem to make this an idiomatic phrase.  The idiomatic JA equivalent would be , literally “to stand or set up a living”, similarly non-obvious for anyone not fluent in the language.  -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 22:11, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Re: "common gloss". That's why we take the trouble to offer several definitions of make. and livelihood is a perfectly serviceable gloss at living. I think it does a serious disservice to a language learner to suggest the there are idioms that have to be memorized just to know a single expression, when instead there are polysemic words to learn of very broad application, like make and living. DCDuring TALK 22:57, 10 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete or redirect to [[living]] or [[living]]. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 07:46, 11 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep both as idiomatic set expressions. Another synonym: bring home the bacon. --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 14:33, 12 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep, possibly outside of CFI. While both phrases can probably be understood when seen or heard, the existence of this way of putting it in English is unobvious, I think. Furthermore, both "make a living" and "earn a living" seem more common than the other synonyms, as per Google Ngram Viewer: make a living,earn a living,make ends meet,pay the bills,bring home the bacon,put food on the table,pay the rent.--Dan Polansky (talk) 19:27, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep both. Matthias Buchmeier (talk) 16:57, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Having read make, I can't see a sense to cover this, so keep. Definitely keep earn a living too Mglovesfun (talk) 17:50, 17 June 2013 (UTC)


 * RFD kept: no consensus for deletion after months since nomination. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:40, 1 February 2014 (UTC)