feast or famine
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Alternating between excess and scarcity
Literally: abundance of food versus complete lack of it
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
In terms of Parisian exhibitions, it often seems to be a case of feast or famine.
Fertilisers — feast or famine?
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed on Wikipedia “Irreversible binomial” (CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-29). Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “feast or famine” mean?
Alternating between excess and scarcity Literally: abundance of food versus complete lack of it
Is “feast or famine” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.