meal ticket

noun

: one that serves as the ultimate source of one's income

an advanced degree was his meal ticket

Examples of meal ticket in a Sentence

a star player who is expected to be the team's meal ticket for many years An advanced degree was his meal ticket. We bought three meal tickets at the fair.

Recent Examples on the Web What Titus doesn’t know is that Domitian had already instructed Tenax to orchestrate his assassination, a plan that falls apart so spectacularly that Tenax has to kill Titus himself to save his meal ticket Domitian from facing the blade. —

Hunter Ingram, Variety, 19 July 2024 There’s a special kind of secondhand embarrassment one feels watching a gay man cozy up to far-right actors around the world, while openly lying about how his political meal ticket isn’t homophobic in the slightest. —

Samantha Riedel, Them, 19 July 2024 There was also the shame of walking down the hall to claim his free meal tickets. —

Sarah Matusek, The Christian Science Monitor, 3 July 2024 That prime placement on a popular search query is Bryan’s meal ticket. —

Will Oremus, Washington Post, 26 June 2024 See all Example Sentences for meal ticket

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'meal ticket.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.