the.com/protection
The price of safety, paid in advance, often to the exact danger you feared.
means The act of keeping someone or something safe from harm, loss, or damage — or the racket of charging a fee for that safety, real or manufactured.
from From Latin protegere, 'to cover in front' — pro ('in front') plus tegere ('to cover, to shield'), the same tegere that gives us 'tile' and 'toga,' things that cover and shelter. The Latin sense was literal: a shield held before the body. English borrowed it through French in the medieval period for the general idea of safeguarding, and the word has carried its menace quietly ever since — because anything held 'in front' of you implies something behind it, waiting.
- mafia twist
- Same word describes insurance and the racket mimicking it
- tariff slang
- 19th-century economists called import duties protection too
- legal sense
- Protection orders are restraining orders with better branding
- root cousin
- Shares tegere with toga, a wearable cover