chaperone

plural chaperones

1. An older person who accompanies other younger people to ensure the propriety of their behaviour, often an older woman accompanying a young woman.
2. biochemistryA 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.
3. UKbusinessAn employee sent by a British company to the European Union to work with a client there, to circumvent restrictions imposed after Brexit.

present singular third person chaperones · participle present chaperoning · participle past chaperoned · past chaperoned

1. To act as a chaperone.

   'Purcell had volunteered to chaperone a delegation of female students'

   2006 April 17, The New Yorker, page 27

   2 more examples

   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

   TfL has more than enough to be getting on with each day without having to chaperone TV crews.

   2021 June 30, Tim Dunn, “How we made... Secrets of the London Underground”, in RAIL, number 934, pages 48–49

2. UKbusinessTo work as a chaperone.