Word of the week: Chaperon

Or is it chaperone?

This Bluesky post¹ from Ken White, aka Popehat, got me thinking about “medical chaperones” and about the word chaperon more generally:

“Going for an overdue physical and medical group sent me a text reminding me and also passing along an info sheet about Medical Chaperones, who monitor Sensitive Health Exams, defined as those involving Genitals, Rectum, or Breasts (all caps in original).”

I knew that a chaperon was a protector or escort, specifically and historically an older woman who accompanied a younger unmarried lady or girl in public. But “medical chaperone,” capitalized or not, was new to me. And I’d never really considered the etymology of chaperon, with or without the final E.

Poster for “The Chaperone” (2018), a fictionalized account of the trip to New York taken by the teenage dancer and actress Louise Brooks (Haley Lu Richardson). A pleasant enough film, especially for Brooks fans like me. Richardson is delightful.

First of all, the final E is the sort of error known as a hypercorrection.² As the OED puts it, “English writers often erroneously spell it chaperone, apparently under the supposition that it requires a feminine termination.” The French word, imported into English in the 14th century, is chaperon, which originally meant a kind of hooded cloak; it’s a variant of chape (cape). Just as a chaperon garment protected the wearer, human chaperons protected their charges. And because those human chaperons tended to be women, English speakers got the idea that chaperon needed to be feminized with an E on the end. (In modern French, it’s chaperon regardless of sex.)

As for medical chaperone—as far as I can tell it’s always spelled that way—this is a person who’s been trained to “serve independently as a responsible, neutral, and objective third-party during clinical encounters.” The job has been around longer than I would have guessed. The earliest citation I’ve found for the full term medical chaperone is in a January 2008 article in the Southern Medical Journal, published in Birmingham, Alabama. The article, titled “Medical Chaperone: Outdated Anachronism or Modern Necessity?”, observes that “It is noteworthy that most clinical practice guidelines now recommend not the use but the offer of a chaperone for intimate examinations.” The role of medical chaperone, if not the full “medical chaperone” term, may have originated in the U.K.: One of the SMJ’s citations led me to a May 2001 article in the British Journal of General Practice, “Attitudes of patients towards the use of chaperones in primary care”—note the absence of “medical” in front of “chaperones”—and the citations in that article go back to 1983, also in a British medical journal (“The use of chaperones by general practitioners”).

GlassDoor says the median annual salary in the U.S. for an in-office medical chaperone is $45,543, which strikes me as low for a job that involves looking a lot of rectums. Alternatively, you could hire your own m.c., like The Discreet Medical Chaperone, who serves the New York City area and charges a minimum of $46 an hour.

In a similar vein, here’s my 2019 blog post about intimacy director, a relatively new Hollywood job title.

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Since chaperon originally meant “cape,” how about a little cape content to take us into the week?

Refinery29 predicts that “dramatic capes” will be an important fashion trend this autumn: “Not all heroes wear capes, but all fashion girlies will come fall.” (Remember girlie from my 2023 words-of-the-year post?) The Zoe Report is similarly bullish on capes. And Vogue France went deep into cape history while noting that 27 percent of designers showed capes in their F/W24 collections.³

Last week Milan-based Marni presented a cape that couldn’t quite make up its mind.

A cape worn in Marni’s Fall/Winter 2024 show at Milan Fashion Week

And speaking of capes and fashion, did you know that there’s a Cape Cod Fashion Week? It’s in August, and it goes without saying that it’s a “unique journey.”

Speaking of Massachusetts, Green’s Dictionary of Slang tells us that Cape Cod turkey is (or was) slang for salt cod or a codfish dinner, and cape horn was late-19th-century British slang for “vagina.” GDoS doesn’t yet have the more-recent superhero-ish verb sense of cape: “to defend or show support for.” This cape, which began appearing around 2009, is usually followed by for; Merriam-Webster added it to its dictionary in September 2023. “It evokes the image of someone donning a cape to come to the aid of one being unfairly criticized or attacked,” M-W’s editors wrote, “but often people are accused of caping for someone unworthy of such valor.”

1. We’re supposed to call them “skeets,” aren’t we. But I just can’t.

2. English speakers have been spelling it chaperone for a long time — the earliest example in the OED is from 1720 — so we can’t really call that spelling “wrong.” In fact, Merriam-Webster gives chaperone as the preferred spelling, with chaperon as the less-common variant.

3. I once owned a hooded black wool cape that made me feel very French Lieutenant’s Woman but also was impossible to wear in any normal human context (bus, subway, driving, walking, sitting). Since my life did not, alas, involve pacing a widow’s walk and gazing soulfully out to sea, I eventually sold it.