Homeworld, Home-World, or Home World?

[Krista Ash]

Here's a sentence from a recent review I submitted:

After escaping the brutal conditions in the GenTech labs, Kata and Tau make their way to the planet Trandellia, Kata’s home world.

The editor scorecard said that this sentence was missing a hyphen, but the edit of the sentence was "[should be ‘homeworld’]."

"Homeworld" is not in several dictionaries, and when I search for a definition, wiki-websites are primarily the ones that give a definition for it, so I don't think it is a real word. My question then is, is it acceptable to use "home world" in my sentence, or should it be hyphenated (or do you think homeworld is a real word)?

[MrsCatInTheHat]

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/homeworl ... 0or%20moon.

The above link shows it as, "homeworld." I found it in several other online dictionaries as well.

[Krista Ash]

Thanks for the website, but as I said in my original post, I don’t see it as a real word in more sound dictionaries. Your example is on wiktionary, and maybe my high school teachers were just overzealous in bashing Wikipedia, but I generally don’t trust something that’s only on a website that starts with “wiki”.

When I search for the definition of words, generally google, Webster, and other online dictionaries will show up far before any “wiki” sites. I appreciate your response, but it doesn’t convince me that homeworld is a real word. (Even as I write this post, the spell checker is marking the word as an error)

[MrsCatInTheHat]

It was just the first one I found. It is listed in several online dictionaries. For my search, I used "define homeworld."

[Krista Ash]

Okay, thanks. I guess I just found it odd that the more popular/classic dictionaries didn’t show up for it. Since you are confident it is a word, I’ll assume that the reason is due to its more recent usage or perhaps it’s only common in science fiction books. Thanks for your responses!