This tiny word has a powerful meaning: to support oneself with great difficulty, or to make something last longer through frugality. When used as a verb, it’s almost always paired with “out,” as in, “I eked out a few more drops of the precious substance.” In addition to its verb usage, “eke” was an archaic adverb that meant “also.” We can see an example of this usage in a line from the 1607 play “Knight of the Burning Pestle”: “Say thy name and eke thy occupation.”