"protection" = condom

[Jonathan Lighter]

OED doesn't include this specialized sense.  The following cite is almost certainly an ex.:

  1917 in John Dos Passos _The Fourteenth Chroncile_ (Boston: Gambit, 1973) 87:
  The ambulance section is walking through Bordeaux. Whores--protection etc--Champagne.

  His army unit had just landed in France.

  JL




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