WAYS AND MEANS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does ways and means mean? 

• WAYS AND MEANS (noun)
  The noun WAYS AND MEANS has 1 sense:

1. resources available to meet expenses (especially legislation for raising revenue for a government)

  Familiarity information: WAYS AND MEANS used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• WAYS AND MEANS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Resources available to meet expenses (especially legislation for raising revenue for a government)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting possession and transfer of possession

Hypernyms ("ways and means" is a kind of...):

resource (available source of wealth; a new or reserve supply that can be drawn upon when needed)

 Context examples 

Love came into the world before articulate speech, and in its own early youth it had learned ways and means that it had never forgotten.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

I heard a very warm debate between two professors, about the most commodious and effectual ways and means of raising money, without grieving the subject.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

In my forlorn state I became quite attached to the family, and used to walk about, busy with Mrs. Micawber's calculations of ways and means, and heavy with the weight of Mr. Micawber's debts.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

He learned to sneak about camp, to be crafty, to know what was going on everywhere, to see and to hear everything and to reason accordingly, and successfully to devise ways and means of avoiding his implacable persecutor.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

He listened absently to a long dun from the type-writer people, his mind busy with ways and means of finding a job.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)