1The action or fact of maintaining or supporting oneself at a minimum level.

维持生活所需的最低收入。

1. 1.1 The means of maintaining or supporting oneself.
   勉强生存，维持生计
   the garden provided not only subsistence but a little cash crop

   这个园子不仅维持了生计，还提供了一点经济作物。

   count noun the agricultural working class were deprived of a subsistence

   农业工人阶级被剥夺了生计。

   Example sentencesExamples

   • The issues to be resolved range from the grander puzzles of human evolution and speciation to parochial matters of subsistence and trade.
   • This system is capable of providing for family subsistence but not of producing a large surplus for sale.
   • I wonder if these were partly caused by the urban residents themselves who have long since shown little concern, even disdain, for those who trade physical labour for subsistence.
   • For those who embarked on a literary career, the only recourse was to draw their subsistence from the value of their writing when they signed their contract with a bookseller.
   • Marriage was far less important for slave women than for white women; slave women, unlike their white counterparts, neither shared property with their husbands nor received subsistence from them.
   • And yet, those marginal families, who are most likely to be dependent on subsistence are those who exist outside of the local economy created by ANSCA.
   • Alone among the New Deal agricultural agencies, they provided subsistence and operating credit for farmers.
   • Thanks to local people's generosity, they have already been able to provide a temporary room and subsistence for eight individuals.
   • The average citizen, however, is fortunate if they provide him with subsistence.
   • Although most own very small fields, rights even in these can provide supplementary subsistence.
   • But, of course, it wasn't the weather that had done it: it was the months of dependence in the hotel, with nothing to do, but with a basic subsistence provided.
   • For a time, beginning in the 1920s, fox fur trading served as a supplement to subsistence.
   • Women's wages were calculated on the assumption that they supplemented a family economy rather than providing individual subsistence.
   • The pittance paid out in compensation for retrenchment has provided barely a few months subsistence, with former employees being thrown into abject poverty.
   • She worked as a cleaning lady, waitress, nursing home aid, only to realize that a single job does not provide enough money for subsistence.

   Synonyms

   survival, existence, living, life
2. 1.2as modifier Denoting or relating to production at a level sufficient only for one's own use or consumption, without any surplus for trade.
   自给自足的；仅够自用的
   subsistence agriculture

   自给自足的农业。

   Example sentencesExamples

   • Other factors contributing to such households are housing shortages and the need to generate income through both wage labor and subsistence production.
   • Recent research has indicated that the technologically efficient British agriculture was producing, at least in grain, a large surplus over the subsistence needs of its people.
   • Hence in order to encourage people off the land and away from subsistence production, the incentive to produce for oneself and one's family had to be removed.
   • In a classic subsistence economy, producers are in a direct conversation with nature and make limited demands on a variety of natural system elements.
   • They have a fallback in subsistence production and other cash crops, such as cocoa and copra.
   • These developments all contributed to massive surplus extractions from subsistence producers confined to the reserves.
   • Nor must it be forgotten that there were many European societies, even at the end of the eighteenth century, in which privileged groups thoroughly cornered all consumption above the subsistence minimum.
   • They have always played an important role in agriculture, both in subsistence production and in the production of cash crops on small peasant farms.
   • Throughout much of Africa, the main rural production is subsistence agriculture, which cannot meet the needs of an expanding population.
   • The Parliament of landlords which took over politics in 1640 was not interested in preserving a peasantry engaged in subsistence production.
   • The decline in subsistence production for domestic consumption means that people are doubly disappointed, as they need to buy rice and have no income.
   • She and her husband own four acres of land, sufficient for subsistence agriculture but not much else.
   • In general, FSA personnel helped clients to develop farm plans that moved them away from cash crop agriculture toward a mixed livestock and subsistence economy.
   • Costs of living differ radically, and where subsistence production accounts for a large part of the food supply, GNP grossly underestimates wealth.
   • Given overall limitations to their mobility and associated subsistence production, we find nothing odd about the Dorset pattern.
   • This implies among other things that the wage rate is equal to the subsistence basket evaluated in production prices.
   • We have not argued that the position of a subsistence producer, living at the edge of hunger, is the same as that of an affluent suburban dweller.
   • Participation in the market economy has blurred the strict demarcation of gender roles associated with subsistence production.
   • We know that household and village subsistence economies were predominant in India until at least the early years of the independence era.
   • For women facing the uncertainty of cash remittances or declining income, subsistence production becomes an important safety net.

2Law
The state of remaining in force or effect.

正常情况下只有在婚姻有效时才能继续享有居住权。