I'll try to keep this reply as short as possible.  English as a living
language is always in a state of flux, with new words entering the language,
some old ones falling into decline, and spellings changing.  (Since when do
you see new words like "telephone" in dead languages like Latin?)  To
hyphenate or not to hyphenate is one of the areas of change, and at any
given time different dictionaries will reflect the state of the language by
recording the spelling of a word differently.

In the late-19th century, "to-morrow" (= this morrow) was still hyphenated,
but over the next few decades the word was spelt as one word without the
hyphen, as it is today.  In the late-1940s, in some parts of the
English-speaking world, children were taught to write "today" as "to-day".
It changed to one word soon after.

So it is with "breast feeding", "breast-feeding" and "breastfeeding".
Two-part words that express a single concept, "e.g. "heartbeat", start out
as two words, but a common process is to link them with a hyphen and
eventually spell them as two words.  In the first half of the 1980s, when I
was writing my second book, my publisher asked me to use the (Australian)
Macquarie Dictionary as the spelling standard.  I had been using the Pocket
Oxford, which spelt the word in question as "breast-feeding", but the
Macquarie spelt it as "breastfeeding".  So "breastfeeding" it was in both
editions of that book.

In my first book, first published in Sydney in 1974, I spelt the word with a
hyphen throughout the text - and was surprised to find, on publication, that
the publisher had spelt it as two separate words on the cover.  Later
editions (there were several) with a different publisher (ABA, then NMAA)
spelt it with a hyphen - until at some time in the 1980s the NMAA's in-house
spelling policy changed, and thereafter it was one word, "breastfeeding".
This was in line with what some other writers in other countries were
beginning to do, anyway.  

Even today, different professional or academic journals have their own
"house" styles for use or hyphens - or not.  "Breastfeeding" is still spelt
in any of the above three ways in different publications, whether
periodicals or books.  It is more likely to be spelt as one word in journals
that are focused on breastfeeding and human lactation, probably because is
viewed as a concept.

A further complication is that typing a hyphen on the computer slows the
flow of words and so, to simplify the matter, some publications are leaving
out hyphens by spelling the words as two words, while others are spelling
them as one word.  I can't quickly think of examples, but a perusal of
newspapers will provide words where this happens.

I have to be out the door, and I'd like to continue this discussion.  Please
copy any replies to me privately.

Virginia

Dr Virginia Thorley, OAM, PhD, IBCLC, FILCA 
Brisbane, Qld, Australia 
E: [log in to unmask] 
 
Liz Brooks posted this message to Lactnet and privately to me (as I am
nomail):

Subject:  Why do we say breastmilk?
 
Ok, this falls a little bit into the "word wonk" category, but here goes.
I'm pondering this, and am hitting a dead-end in all the resources on my
shelves.
 
Why do we use the term breastmilk?  And breastfeed?  Instead of breast-milk
or breast-feed?  Or breast-with-a-space-milk? 
 
The International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes is rife with
the hyphenated spelling.  It was passed in 1981, and the lactivists working
for its passage were no slouches, so I have to believe that was the
prevalent nomenclature in the day.  Miriam Labbok's paper in 1990 sought
uniform definitions of breastfeeding in research.  No hyphen, and no
explanation why, just a well-reasoned plea to make defintions uniform to
advance comparative review of research.
 
So how did we all end up on the bandwagon of no hyphenation?
 
I know there are some who take exception to the terms breastmilk and
breastfeed -- in preference for human milk or human milk feeding -- since we
don't describe dogs, cows, gorillas or giraffes as teat-feeding or
nipple-feeding their young, and shouldn't then use the human body part to
describe the feeding of human babies.   But note even there:  why aren't the
proponents using "humanmilk" all one word?
 
 

Liz Brooks, JD, IBCLC, FILCA
Wyndmoor, PA, USA

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