breast-feed
Americanverb (used with object)
verb (used without object)
-
(of a baby) to nurse.
-
to nurse a baby.
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of breast-feed
First recorded in 1900–05
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
She plans to breast-feed as long as she can, aiming for a year.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 30, 2025
The picture has improved a bit since then—babies now breast-feed a little longer—but the over-all pattern holds.
From The New Yorker ● Nov. 18, 2019
This year, remarkably, marks the first year that it has been legal to breast-feed in public in all 50 states.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 22, 2018
“We all want to have the same experiences as women,” Maria Clifford, 38, a British transgender mother who has been using a surrogate to breast-feed her child, said on Thursday.
From New York Times ● Feb. 15, 2018
For us, as in America, it’s known to be healthy to breast-feed.
From "Facing the Lion" by Joseph Lemasolai Lekuton and Herman Viola
Avyan was being breast-fed but his father says the family - who live in Indore city in India's central Madhya Pradesh state - gave him the diluted mixture in addition.
From BBC ● Jan. 2, 2026
Elsewhere in the Instagram Q&A, Paltrow touched on breast-feeding when a fan asked if she had breast-fed her children, Apple Martin, 19, and Moses Martin, 17.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 31, 2023
“We have stopped all the medicines that we were giving Aya and now she is being breast-fed when she needs,” Maarouf said by telephone from Afrin.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 13, 2023
The plant shutdown and subsequent product recall deepened a supply shortage in a nation where less than half of babies are exclusively breast-fed through their first three months, according to federal data from 2020.
From Reuters ● Aug. 27, 2022
This means that the breast-fed human infant is receiving small, but regular additions to the load of toxic chemicals building up in his body.
From "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson
Currently any drink, other than tea or coffee, with over 150mg requires a label warning of its high caffeine content that says it is not recommended for children or pregnant or breast-feeding women.
From BBC ● Jul. 16, 2026
Nestlé has weathered controversies before, including a U.S. boycott in the late 1970s tied to marketing baby formula as an alternative to breast-feeding in developing countries.
From Barron's ● Jun. 10, 2026
She talks about her intense anxiety for her infant son, whom she was still breast-feeding when she was arrested.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 19, 2025
This is why energy drinks containing over 150mg of caffeine, for example, are already required by EU law to carry labels stating: "High caffeine content. Not recommended for children or pregnant or breast-feeding women".
From BBC ● Jul. 31, 2025
At home I found my mother breast-feeding the new baby, Dinah.
From "Kaffir Boy: An Autobiography" by Mark Mathabane
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
