He lives in Leelanau County with his artist wife Dona. Michael Sheehan retired in 1994 after teaching English for 26 years in the City Colleges of Chicago. Sheehan Location: Cedar, Michigan, United States There is no archive.Ībout Me Name: Michael J. EST, by going to and clicking on Listen Now. Listen to Mike’s program in real time every Tuesday morning, 9:00 - 10:00 a.m.

Now available from McFarland & Co.: Word Parts Dictionary, 2nd edition By then, it meant “a married or elderly woman, who, for the sake of propriety, accompanies a young unmarried lady in public as guide and protector.” īy 1720, the transfer from a protective head covering to a protective person was complete. In a strange turn of events, it also meant a small escutcheon placed on the forehead of a horse pulling a hearse during a funeral procession. The American Heritage Dictionary also points out that it was applied to the hood placed on a hawk’s head to keep it calm. It comes from an Old French word that meant a hood used to cover a person’s head protectively. So it’s probably better to give preference to chaperon. Someone mistakenly thought that an -e- was needed at the end of the word to make it feminine. Elizabeth asks if the word should be spelled chaperon or chaperone.īoth are found in dictionaries, but some commentators point out that the chaperone spelling is an incorrect Anglicization of a French word.

Spell chaperone