Idiom
Bread and butter
Your bread and butter is your main source of income, or the basic, everyday work or product that keeps you going.
How people use it
People use it for a job or product line that pays the bills: "Weddings are the photographer's bread and butter." It can also mean the basic, essential part of something: "Passing and dribbling are the bread and butter of basketball." As an adjective it is hyphenated, as in bread-and-butter issues, meaning ordinary, everyday concerns. A bread-and-butter letter is an older phrase for a thank-you note to a host. The tone is neutral.
Also said: bread-and-butter issues.
Examples
- Repairing bikes is the shop's bread and butter, even though they also sell new ones.
- For our small bakery, birthday cakes are the bread and butter that keep the lights on.
- Teachers say daily reading practice is the bread and butter of a good first-grade classroom.
Where it comes from
Bread spread with butter was one of the most basic everyday foods in Britain and America, so it became a natural symbol of ordinary living. By the 1800s people used bread and butter to mean a person's livelihood: the work that puts food on the table.
Check yourself
1. If tax returns are an accountant's bread and butter, what are they?
Answer: Her main source of income. Bread and butter means the main, reliable work that pays the bills.
2. Which sentence uses the idiom correctly?
Answer: Tourist season is the bread and butter of this beach town.. Tourism is the town's main income, which is what bread and butter means.
Similar idioms
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