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/

breadwinner (plural breadwinners)

1. The primary income-earner in a household.
   • 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.

• breadwinning