Something odd came up today while I was editing: the question of whether "like-minded" or "likeminded" was correct. My kids were all like "Hyphenated, obviously!" while my wife and I (both children of the early 80s) thought the closed version more standard. Merriam-Webster, to my surprise, only included the hyphenated form, and SentenceStack showed a 93% preference in its corpus for the hyphen as well.
Now intrigued, I checked Google's ngram tracker. It turns out that English speakers heavily preferred the closed form *until the early 2000s*, when the hyphenated form took off. This spike in its use coincides with the birth of MySpace, Facebook, and other forms of social media.
I find this sort of thing fascinating!
@negativeprimes Interesting. I’m a child of the 70’s and 80’s, but went to hyphenated as well. Tho I don’t think non-hyphenated would throw me off at all.
Have I just adapted to the modern usage?
@cthellis Great question! My mom, of all people, also defaults to hyphenated. Maybe it's a regional thing as well?