chaperone
/ˈʃapərəʊn
/- While men and women can date whomever they wish, they must be accompanied by a chaperone.
- If you have a customs inspector, make sure that person is accompanied by a chaperon while they are aboard.
Synonyms
- A young girl required a chaperon - usually a parent or an older brother or uncle, to protect her honor and prevent premarital pregnancy, which could result in banishment until her marriage.
- And why might two young ladies such as yourselves be traveling without a chaperone?
- Lady Anne is forced to accompany her and play chaperone, as it is inappropriate for a young lady to be out without a chaperone.
- Ripley places the blame on the 14 months she spent filming in France and England, chaperoned by her mother but away from home and her friends at school in Dundee.
- Yet even though these women were duly chaperoned by mothers or other female relatives, critics increasingly attacked European training as a danger to American womanhood.
- I'm chaperoning my 11 year old daughter to the 2005 Children's World Summit for the Environment in Toyohashi City and Toyota City in Aichi Prefecture in Japan.
Synonyms
Derivatives
chaperonage
/ noun ...- The idea of chaperonage makes us laugh; women are independent.
- As traditional restraints on females eased, women's clothing became less restrictive and first the bicycle and then the automobile freed young couples to escape from the rigid chaperonage of previous generations.
- But such chaperonage does not take place for Paraguayan Americans, who often meet at community Catholic Church activities or through educational pursuits.
Origin
Late Middle English (denoting a hood or cap, regarded as giving protection): from French, feminine of chaperon 'hood', diminutive of chape (see chape). The current sense dates from the early 18th century.
cap from Old English:
We get our word cap from Latin cappa ‘hood’, which may be related to Latin caput ‘head’. Cape (late 16th century), ‘a cloak’, also come from cappa, while the geographical cape (Late Middle English) goes back to caput. The same source gives us chaperone (Late Middle English) first recorded as a hood. A person providing protection or cover by accompanying another, dates from the early 18th century. The saying if the cap fits, wear it goes back to a dunce's cap, of the kind that poor performers at school had to wear as a mark of disgrace. Americans use the version if the shoe fits, wear it. See also chapel