🗓️ Idiom: Tighten Your Belt (v)
💬 Meaning
- To spend less money than usual because of financial difficulty.
- To reduce costs and live more carefully during hard times.
🧠 Example Sentences
- After the budget cuts, everyone had to tighten their belts at work.
- We’ll need to tighten our belts this quarter to stay profitable.
- When sales dropped, the company tightened its belt and paused hiring.
🏛️ Origin
This idiom comes from the idea that when people have less money, they may eat less, and so they can literally tighten their belts. Over time, it became a common phrase for saving money or reducing spending in hard times.
📝 Practice Exercises
1. Fill in the blank:
Due to lower profits this year, the company had to __________ and cut extra costs.
Answer
tighten its belt
2. Choose the correct meaning of “tighten your belt”:
A) Increase spending
B) Save money and spend less
C) Ask for more funding
Answer
B) Save money and spend less
3. Rewrite the sentence using the idiom:
“We had to reduce spending to stay within the budget.” → Change the sentence using: tighten our belts
Answer
We had to tighten our belts to stay within the budget.