Meaning
Describing a situation with no middle ground, in which activity, supply or success swings between abundance and total scarcity. It is used especially of workloads, orders and income, typically predicatively ('business is feast or famine') or in the fuller pattern 'it's either feast or famine'. Neutral register with a mildly wry tone; especially common in business and freelance contexts. Regional use: General English (earliest evidence American).
Origin
The OED's earliest evidence for 'feast or famine' is American: 1822, in The Supporter & Scioto, an Ohio newspaper. The expression modernises a much older habit of contrasting plenty and want in parallel form. Idiom Origins points to the seven years of plenty and famine foretold in Genesis 41, Shakespeare's 'making a famine where abundance lies' (Sonnet 1), and Thomas Fuller's 1732 line 'Is there no mean, but fast or feast?', an example of the predecessor construction 'feast or fast'. Swapping 'fast' for 'famine' sharpened the antithesis, and the modern form established itself in nineteenth-century American usage before becoming general English. Nothing about the origin is disputed; the only caveat is that the path from Fuller's 'feast or fast' to the Ohio newspaper wording is a plausible lineage rather than a documented chain of borrowings.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a feast or a famine
- either feast or famine
- feast or fast
Usage Examples
- Freelance interpreting is feast or famine: eleven bookings in March, none at all in April.
- For the coastal resort, tourism is either feast or famine, depending entirely on the monsoon.
- Ticket sales have always been feast or famine for the little theatre.