chaperone means an older person who accompanies other younger people to ensure the propriety of their behaviour, often an older woman accompanying a young woman. It carries an Arena rating of 1514, earned across 6 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, chaperone ranks #566 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #638 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words, #959 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words, #1,977 of 17,126 for Most Satisfying to Say.
chaperone is pronounced /ˈʃæ.pəˌɹoʊn/.
Why “chaperone” is a great word
A person, typically older, who accompanies and supervises younger people in social situations to ensure propriety; also, a protein that assists in the folding and assembly of other macromolecules. From the French chaperon, meaning 'hood' or 'cap', itself a diminutive of Old French chape ('cape, hood'), from Late Latin cappa ('hooded cloak'), the modern sense derives from the metaphor of a protective covering extended to social guardianship, first attested in the late eighteenth century. Unlike an escort, which provides company or safety on a journey, or a guardian, which bears a lasting legal duty, the chaperone assumes a specific, temporary mantle of social vigilance. It is the rustle of taffeta at a debutante ball, the conspicuously placed chair in a parlor, the molecular shepherd guiding a nascent protein into its proper shape—a formalized buffer against the natural chaos of interaction.
noun
- An older person who accompanies other younger people to ensure the propriety of their behaviour, often an older woman accompanying a young woman.
- A protein that assists the non-covalent folding/unfolding and the assembly/disassembly of other macromolecular structures, but does not occur in these structures when the latter are performing their normal biological functions.
- An employee sent by a British company to the European Union to work with a client there, to circumvent restrictions imposed after Brexit.
verb
- To act as a chaperone.e.g.“They played you off very cunning, Eliza. If it had been only one of them, you could have nailed him. But you see, there was two; and one of them chaperoned the other, as you might say.” — 1912 (date written), [George] Bernard Shaw, “Pygmalion”, in Androcles and the Lion, Overruled, Pygmalion, London: Constable and Company, published 1916, →OCLC, Act V, page 183:
- To work as a chaperone.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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