Breastfeeding

How to spell breastfeeding

13 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce breastfeeding

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does breastfeeding mean?

1. nounThe act of feeding a baby with milk directly from the mother's breast.

Breastfeeding in a sentence

• The clinic offers free advice on breastfeeding for new mothers.

• Many workplaces now provide a private room to support breastfeeding.

Where does breastfeeding come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is a transparent modern compound built from two very old native English elements. The first part, 'breast', descends from the Old English breost, meaning the chest or bosom, which traces back to a Germanic root shared with the Dutch borst and German Brust. The second part, 'feed', comes from the Old English fedan, meaning to give food to or to nourish, related to the word 'food' itself. The verb 'to breastfeed' was formed by joining these two ideas, and the noun and participle 'breastfeeding' followed naturally with the -ing ending. While the underlying words are ancient, the combined term in its current form is relatively recent in everyday use, becoming common in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the spelling trap lies entirely in the silent-feeling cluster of 'breast', where the 'ea' sounds like a short e and the final 't' bumps straight into 'feeding'.

How the word is built

• breast (from Old English breost: the chest or bosom)
• feed (from Old English fedan: to give food to)
• -ing (gerund/verbal noun suffix)