protegêlo

Protegêlo is a Portuguese verbal construction formed by the verb proteger in its infinitive form with the enclitic direct-object pronoun lo, meaning “him” or “it.” The phrase translates roughly as “to protect him/it” and is used across Brazilian and European Portuguese to refer to protecting a masculine singular animate or inanimate object.

In standard Portuguese, the enclitic pronoun is attached to the infinitive with a hyphen: protegê-lo. The lo pronoun here functions as the direct object. The accent on protegê helps preserve the correct stress pattern of the verb when the pronoun is attached. While you may sometimes see informal spellings without the hyphen, the hyphenated form protegê-lo is the conventional orthography in formal writing.

Usage and examples are common in everyday speech and formal texts. Examples include: Vou protegê-lo agora. (I will protect him/it now.) É importante protegê-lo de danos. (It is important to protect him/it from harm.) Não posso protegê-lo sozinho. (I cannot protect him/it alone.) The construction can appear with different tenses and moods, including with auxiliary verbs, as in ter protegido-o or protegi-lo, depending on the tense and regional variation.

Notes on variation: the clitic lo is the masculine direct object pronoun used with vertebrates or objects, and its form and placement can vary slightly by dialect. The related concept of clitic pronouns and their attachment to infinitives is a broader topic in Portuguese grammar.