protection money
"protection-money" is a 15-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“protection money” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 16
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Money paid, especially at regular intervals, to criminals or to corrupt officials who threaten to cause harm to the payer or to his or her business if the money is not paid.
Corpus desk
Index EN-protection-money · protection money · English
protection money · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 16 letters
- VOW-7 7 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "P" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | protection money |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 16 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “protection money” in English
Rare enough to double-check
protection money is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Money paid, especially at regular intervals, to criminals or to corrupt officials who threaten to cause harm to the payer or to his or her business if the money is not paid.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for protection money, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so its spelling pattern is best understood through pronunciation rather than a traceable origin. The correct English form is protection money, spelled P-R-O-T-E-C-T-I-O-N- -M-O-N-E-Y.
Definition
- 1Money paid, especially at regular intervals, to criminals or to corrupt officials who threaten to cause harm to the payer or to his or her business if the money is not paid.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how protection money appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Those in the Lowland line who lay near him, and desired to enjoy their lives and property in quiet, were contented to pay him a small composition, in name of protection money, and comforted themselves with the old proverb that it was better to "fleech the deil than fight him."
[T]he police had raised the tariff for sporting houses, and would collect seventy-five and a hundred a month protection money.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.