Word.ws English Dictionary

pro-martyr

pro-martyr noun: the first martyr to die for a particular cause.

Noun

pro-martyr (plural pro-martyrs)

  1. The first martyr to die for a particular cause.
    • Such a man was John Brown. He was strong in his moral and mental nature, as well as in his physical nature. He was born to lead; and he led, and made himself the pro-martyr of a cause rapidly perfecting.1882, George Washington Williams, History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880
    • John was a son, probably the younger son, of Zebedee and Salome and a brother of the elder James who became the pro-martyr of the apostles.1926, Relief Society Magazine

Adjective

pro-martyr (comparative more pro-martyr, superlative most pro-martyr)

  1. In favor of or supporting martyrdom or a group of martyrs.
    • Though not hearing the tellers' full stories in these passages, we are nonetheless reminded that neutrality was not a quality of storytelling. The pro-martyr stance of the statements above will only have been more dramatized in their story form.2002, Antoinette Clark Wire, Holy Lives, Holy Deaths: A Close Hearing of Early Jewish Storytellers
    • If we now turn to another lustily pro-martyr work we can open up some more key themes and problems.2004, Lucy Grig, Making martyrs in late antiquity, page 18

Examples of pro-martyr in a sentence

  • We have a tragic instance of baneful clericalism in the death of Patrick Hamilton, the pro-martyr of the Scottish Reformation1952, John Arnold Fleming, The medieval Scots scholar in France, page 94:
  • Cuthbert Mayne was captured and executed in 1577 and is regarded as the pro-martyr of the seminary priests.1996, Thomas M. McCoog, The Reckoned Expense: Edmund Campion and the Early English Jesuits, →ISBN:

Forms of pro-martyr

Noun
pluralpro-martyrs
Adjective
comparativemore pro-martyr
superlativemost pro-martyr

Origin of pro-martyr

From pro- + martyr.

Questions about pro-martyr

What does pro-martyr mean?
Pro-martyr means the first martyr to die for a particular cause.
How do you use pro-martyr in a sentence?
We have a tragic instance of baneful clericalism in the death of Patrick Hamilton, the pro-martyr of the Scottish Reformation
What part of speech is pro-martyr?
Pro-martyr can be a noun or an adjective.
What is the plural of pro-martyr?
The plural of pro-martyr is pro-martyrs.

Words near pro-martyr in the dictionary

  1. pro-lifeism
  2. pro-lifer
  3. pro-lifers
  4. pro-lockdown
  5. pro-marijuana
  6. pro-martyr
  7. pro-martyrs
  8. pro-mask
  9. pro-masker
  10. pro-maskers
  11. pro-matrix metalloproteinase

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pro-martyr (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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