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[14] The noun protest comes from early modern French protest, a derivative of the verb protester, which goes back to Latin prōtestārī ‘make a public declaration’. This was a compound verb formed from the prefix prō- ‘out, in public’ and testārī ‘declare, bear witness’ (source of or related to English attest, contest, detest, testament, testify, etc). The notion of ‘making an objection’ is a comparatively late development in the word’s semantic history. Protestant [16], which comes from the Latin present participle, originated in 1529 as a term for those Germans who dissented from the decree of the Diet of Spires, an assembly of the estates of the Holy Roman Empire, which called for obedience to Rome. It was first used in English in 1539, and within a few years had broadened out in application to denote anyone dissenting from Roman Catholicism.
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