Subsistence is having just enough to stay alive. Subsistence farming, at subsistence level, a subsistence wage.
Subsistence farming means growing what your family eats rather than anything to sell, which is how a large part of the world still lives. A subsistence wage is one that covers survival and nothing beyond it.
1nounsubsistenceHaving just enough to stay alive.
“The workers were paid barely enough for subsistence, let alone for any comforts.”
subsistence is a living.
Latin subsistentia comes from subsistere, to stand firm, from sub plus sistere, to stand.
Latin
subsistentia — substance, reality, in Medieval Latin also stability
Middle French
subsistence
Middle English
subsistence
English, today
subsistence
Built from
From Middle English subsistence; partly from Middle French subsistence (modern French subsistance) and partly from its etymon Latin subsistentia (“substance, reality, in Medieval Latin also stability”), from Latin subsistēns, present participle of subsistō (“to continue, subsist”). Perhaps also partly from subsist + ence.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA