Protect

//pɹəˈtɛkt// verb

verb ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To keep safe; to defend; to guard; to prevent harm coming to. ambitransitive

    "to protect a child from danger"

  2. 2
    shield from danger, injury, destruction, or damage wordnet
  3. 3
    To book a passenger on a later flight if there is a chance they will not be able to board their earlier reserved flight.
  4. 4
    use tariffs to favor domestic industry wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
defendfosterguardpreservesecureabet

Example

More examples

"In the days of the knights, they wore shields to protect themselves from sword-fight wounds."

Etymology

Attested in English since 1530, from Latin prōtēctus (“covered, protected”), past participle of prōtegere (“to cover the front, protect”) from prō, prō- (“before, in front of”) + tegere (“to cover”), see tegument. Displaced native Middle English shelden, from Old English sċildan (“to protect,” literally “to shield”).

Related phrases

shoot and protectand servearmy servicecare forcops dofrom harmkeep safekeeping safelook afterlooking afterparents childrenpolice job

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.