keep the wolf from the door
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To manage to survive financially
Literally: keep a wolf away from one's door
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
No sign of any more money than is needed to keep the wolf from the door.
The money was to pay the sheep to keep the wolves from our doors.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “keep the wolf from the door” mean?
To manage to survive financially Literally: keep a wolf away from one's door
Is “keep the wolf from the door” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.