[Idiom] make （both）ends meet

[LiuJing]

AmE speakers would say they never adopt 'both' in the idiom. How about BrE speakers?

 

[Rover_KE]

'Make ends meet' is the standard idiom in BE, too.

 

[LiuJing]

'Make ends meet' is the standard idiom in BE, too.

make ends meet - Idioms - by the Free Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.

 

[LiuJing]

make ends meet - definition in the British English Dictionary & Thesaurus - Cambridge Dictionaries Online

(Indian English make both ends meet) to have just enough money to pay for the things that you needCoping and not copingDealing with things or peopleTolerating and enduringBudgeting and saving money (Definition of make ends meet from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

 

[bhaisahab]

make ends meet - definition in the British English Dictionary & Thesaurus - Cambridge Dictionaries Online

(Indian English make both ends meet) to have just enough money to pay for the things that you needCoping and not copingDealing with things or peopleTolerating and enduringBudgeting and saving money (Definition of make ends meet from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

What is your point?

 

[LiuJing]

What is your point?

I tried to verify if 'make both ends meet' is British English before I made a google search and found the Indian English notion. Evidently the idiom with 'both' is less common, isn't it?

 

[Tdol]

Yes, it's less common. It would sound strange in countries where they don't use it.

 

[Raymott]

I tried to verify if 'make both ends meet' is British English before I made a google search and found the Indian English notion. Evidently the idiom with 'both' is less common, isn't it?

It's less common probably because you can't have one end meeting the other without the other meeting it. Making one end meet doesn't make sense.
'Both' is redundantly used like this in a few phrases, such as "Are they both the same?" Of course, A can't be the same as B unless B is the same as A, so if either of them is the same as the other, they are both the same. If they are not both the same, then neither of them is the same.

 

[Tdol]

This piece suggests that the both ends form was used in BrE a long time ago- some Indian expressions preserve forms that we have lost:
Making Both Ends Meet