subsist on

phrasal verb

subsisted on; subsisting on; subsists on

: to use (something) as a way to stay alive : to live on (something)

poor people subsisting on just one or two dollars a day

The villagers subsist almost entirely on rice and fish.

(humorous) My brother subsists on pizza.

Examples of subsist on in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Oxfam reported that people there were subsisting on the equivalent of less than a can of beans per day, and that ninety-five per cent of the territory had no access to clean water. —Dorothy Wickenden, The New Yorker, 28 Oct. 2024

The entire inmate population subsists on the same meal, laid out across a single table that arrives on a descending platform once a day, stopping at each floor for a few minutes. —A.a. Dowd, Vulture, 5 Oct. 2024

Was an ancient reptile, for all intents and purposes a 15-million-year-old dinosaur, actually roaming this expanse of creosote scrub, subsisting on beavertail cactus flesh, going about her day ignorant of the weather alerts, the headlines, the untold human tragedies? —Outside Online, 23 Oct. 2024

Promoters of the carnivore diet argue that our ancestors subsisted on animals almost exclusively. —Steven Kurutz Steven Kurutz, New York Times, 30 Apr. 2024