Word.ws English Dictionary

protection money

protection money noun: 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.

Noun

protection money (uncountable)

  1. 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.
    • 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."1827, Sir Walter Scott, "The Highland Widow" ch. 2, in The Chronicles of the Canongate
    • [T]he police had raised the tariff for sporting houses, and would collect seventy-five and a hundred a month protection money.a. 1911, David Graham Phillips, chapter 13, in Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise

protection money meaning in Gujarati, Indonesian and Vietnamese

protection money in Gujarati

protection money
ખંડણી khaṇḍṇī

protection money in Indonesian

money regular interval, extorted by criminals threatening to cause harm
jaminan perlindungan

protection money in Vietnamese

money regular interval, extorted by criminals threatening to cause harm
bảo kê

Examples of protection money in a sentence

  • Four members of an Asian gang were arrested yesterday and charged with extortion and conspiracy for demanding protection money from Chinese restaurants in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.1993 June 15, “Four Men Arrested In Protection Scheme”, in New York Times, retrieved 04 Jun 2014:
  • [T]he Mungiki . . . hit the headlines in April with a string of beheadings as they tussled for control of lucrative bus routes by executing drivers and conductors who refused to pay protection money.2007 November 6, Rob Crilly, “Kenya Accused of Mass Killings”, in Time, retrieved 04 Jun 2014:
  • [T]he FSB, interior ministry and police collect protection money from businesses.2010 December 1, Luke Harding, “WikiLeaks cables condemn Russia as 'mafia state'”, in The Guardian, UK, retrieved 04 Jun 2014:

Questions about protection money

What does protection money mean?
Protection money means 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.
What is protection money in Gujarati?
Protection money in Gujarati is ખંડણી (khaṇḍṇī). See Protection money meaning in Gujarati.
How do you use protection money in a sentence?
Four members of an Asian gang were arrested yesterday and charged with extortion and conspiracy for demanding protection money from Chinese restaurants in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
What part of speech is protection money?
Protection money is a noun.

Words near protection money in the dictionary

  1. protectingness
  2. protectins
  3. protection
  4. protection course
  5. protection courses
  6. protection money
  7. protection proxies
  8. protection proxy
  9. protection racket
  10. protection rackets
  11. protectional

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: protection money (page history and authors); ખંડણી (Gujarati) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “protection money.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/protection_money. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.