Reader's question: I really wish I could find a way to help my brother Bill. He lost his job over a year ago when the company he worked for went bankrupt and he's been out on the street ever since."

Could you explain “out on the street”?

My comments:

It’s simply another colloquial description of the unemployed. The unemployed are sometimes described as tramps – does this ring a bell? Tramps, you see, are “out on the street” a lot, moving from place to place looking for a job or, worse, begging for food. Bill has lost his job. He’s unemployed. He’s jobless. He’s out on the street. He’d be called a tramp if he stopped looking for jobs and began begging for food.

Related stories:

Fly-by-night

Might-have-beens

On top of the world

Button your lip

Pass the buck

Fire sale

Nuts and bolts

Across the board

Be in someone’s shoes

In that vein

The devil you know…

Right out of the gate

Leap-frog

Up the ante

loose ends

Nose-bleed section

Off the rails

Keeping up with the Jones's

Benefits package

Closed-door talk

March Madness

On-again,off-again

Go to Zhang Xin's column

本文仅代表作者本人观点，与本网立场无关。欢迎大家讨论学术问题，尊重他人，禁止人身攻击和发布一切违反国家现行法律法规的内容。

Zhang Xin has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.