Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary - protest

(protested) Frequency: The word is one of the 1500 most common words in English. 1. If you protest against something or about something, you say or show publicly that you object to it. In American English, you usually say that you protest it. Groups of women took to the streets to protest against the arrests... The students were protesting at overcrowding in the university hostels... They were protesting soaring prices... He picked up the cat before Rosa could protest. VERB: V about/against/at n, V about/against/at n, V n, V 2. A protest is the act of saying or showing publicly that you object to something. The opposition now seems too weak to stage any serious protests against the government... The unions called a two-hour strike in protest at the railway authority’s announcement. ...a protest march. N-VAR: oft N against/at/about n 3. If you protest that something is the case, you insist that it is the case, when other people think that it may not be. When we tried to protest that Mo was beaten up they didn’t believe us... ‘I never said any of that to her,’ he protested... He has always protested his innocence. VERB: V that, V with quote, V n