Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[alexandra]

Hi everybody

I've read these two sentences:

1- ...But as few of the aspirants comply with every EU requirement,
the make-or-break issues are social and political as much as economic.

2- Her father's make or break point of view made it impossible for her to argue with him.

And I have two questions:
1- What's the meaning of make-or-break?
2- Is it written with hyphen or not?

Can you please help me?

[bud]

Hi Alexandra,

It descibes something that will bring about either success or failure. In your first example, the make-or-break issues in complying with EU requirements are social, political and economic. If all of these are met, then there will be success. If only one of them is not met, then there will be failure. (At least, that is the author's viewpoint). There could be other issues as well, such as religious, but they would not cause success or failure by themselves.

How do you write it? I don't know, but I think people write it both ways. It would be easily understood either way.

Hope that helps.

[advoca]

It is not usual to use hyphens when writing the phrase 'make or break.'

Some people use them because they do not know the normal way. My advice is to leave them out.

[bud]

Alexandra, according to the Cambridge Dictionary of Idioms, it is written both ways. Here is what they say (boldface mine):

make or break sth

to make something a success or a failure
TV will either make or break courtroom justice in this country.

be make or break for sb/sth

The Milan show will be make or break for his new designs.

make-or-break

It's make-or-break time for Britain's tennis players. [always before noun]

from: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=make*8+0&dict=I



Also, you can seracch on' make-or-break' here to see what several other dictionaries say:

http://www.onelook.com/

[alexandra]

Thank you sooo much.

[bud]

You're quite welcome.

I did not notice this at first, so in case you didn't either, this is what the dictionary is saying about the spelling:

Only use hyphens when "make or break" precedes a noun. Even in that case, hyphens are optional.