feast or famine

Describing a situation in which there is either an excess or a lack of quantity. Freelance projects always seem to be feast or famine, unfortunately—this line of work is very unpredictable.

Fig. either too much (of something) or not enough (of something). (*Typically: be ~; have ~.) This month is very dry, and last month it rained almost every day. Our weather is either feast or famine. Sometimes we are busy, and sometimes we have nothing to do. It's feast or famine.

Also, either feast or famine. Either too much or too little, too many or too few. For example, Free-lancers generally find it's feast or famine-too many assignments or too few, or Yesterday two hundred showed up at the fair, today two dozen-it's either feast or famine . This expression, which transfers an overabundance or shortage of food to numerous other undertakings, was first recorded in 1732 as feast or fast, the noun famine being substituted in the early 1900s.

If someone describes a situation as feast or famine, they mean that there is always either too much or too little of something. Money is a problem. `It's feast or famine with me,' she says. Note: People often vary this expression. This new series is a feast in what is otherwise a famine of intelligent television. After a long famine, a mini-feast: investors are once again providing banks with the capital they need.

Either an overabundance or a shortage. This expression originated as either feast or fast, which is how it appeared in Thomas Fuller’s Gnomologia (1732) and still survived in 1912 (“Dock labour has been graphically described as ‘either a feast or a fast,’” London Daily Telegraph). In America, famine was substituted sometime during the twentieth century. The term is still frequently applied to alternating overabundance and shortages of work, as is often the case for freelancers, seasonal laborers, and the like.