Word.ws English Dictionary

proprietary

UK/pɹəˈpɹaɪ.ə.tə.ɹi//pɹəˈpɹaɪ.əˌtɛɹ.i/

proprietary adjective: of or relating to property or ownership.

Adjective

proprietary (comparative more proprietary, superlative most proprietary)

  1. Of or relating to property or ownership.
    • proprietary rights
    Synonyms:
    proprietorial
  2. Owning something; having ownership.
    • the proprietary class
    Synonyms:
    proprietorial
  3. Created or manufactured exclusively by the owner or licensee of intellectual property rights, as with a patent or trade secret.
    • The continuous profitability of the company is based on its many proprietary products.
    • It was reported that the recipes for the secret sauce and grinder sandwiches were proprietary, known only to the current president of the corporation and the former owner of the restaurant.1996, Michael Craig Budden, Protecting Trade Secrets under the Uniform Trade Secrets Act: Practical Advice for Executives, Westport, Conn.: Quorum Books, →ISBN, page 20
    Antonyms:
    nonproprietary
  4. Nonstandard and controlled by one particular organization.
    • a proprietary extension to the HTML standard for Web page structure
  5. Privately owned.
    • a proprietary lake; a proprietary chapel
  6. Possessive, jealous, or territorial.
    Synonyms:
    proprietorial

Noun

proprietary (plural proprietaries)

  1. A proprietor or owner.
    • Wherefore what issue soever shall result from my mind , by his means most happily married to a retired life , must , of due , redound to his honour , as the sole proprietary of my pains during my present condition1647, Thomas Fuller, The Cause and Cure of a Wounded Conscience
  2. A body of proprietors, taken collectively.
  3. The rights of a proprietor.
  4. A monk who had reserved goods and belongings to himself, notwithstanding his renunciation of all at the time of profession.
  5. A company doing legitimate business while also serving as a front for espionage.
    • For all practical purposes, the proprietaries conduct their own financial affairs with a minimum of oversight from CIA headquarters.1975, Victor Marchetti, John D. Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, page 159
    • The “operating proprietaries” actually do business as private firms. They are incorporated where they are officed, they file the applicable state and federal tax returns, and they obtain the licenses necessary to a legitimate business operation.2013, Joseph Goulden, The Dictionary of Espionage: Spyspeak into English, page 175

proprietary meaning in Tamil, Bengali and Kannada

proprietary in Tamil

தகுதியுரிமை முறை, உரிமையுடைமை

proprietary in Bengali

মালিকানা, মালিক, মালিকবর্গ, সম্পত্তিতুল্য, সম্পত্তিযুক্ত

proprietary in Kannada

ಒಡೆತನದ, ಧಣಿಯ, ಮಾಲೀಕನ, ಸ್ವಾಮ್ಯದ, ಮಾಲೀಕತನದ

Examples of proprietary in a sentence

  • Its generic name is rosuvastatin, but you may know it better by the proprietary name Crestor.
  • The increasing use of proprietary technology on social-media sites shows that the FaiF Web is dead.
  • Its generic name is flying disc, but you may know it better by the proprietary name Frisbee. The generic name frisbee (lowercase) is used informally but not officially or legally.

All 34 example sentences with proprietary

Synonyms of proprietary

Antonyms

Forms of proprietary

Adjective
comparativemore proprietary
superlativemost proprietary
Noun
pluralproprietaries

Origin of proprietary

From French propriétaire, from Latin proprietārius. By surface analysis, propriety + -ary. Compare with the Latin proprietas (“property”) and proprius (“ownership”).

Words formed from proprietary

Phrases with proprietary

Questions about proprietary

What does proprietary mean?
Proprietary means of or relating to property or ownership.
What is proprietary in Tamil?
Proprietary in Tamil is தகுதியுரிமை முறை, உரிமையுடைமை. See Proprietary meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is proprietary?
Proprietary can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce proprietary?
Proprietary is pronounced /pɹəˈpɹaɪ.ə.tə.ɹi/ (UK).

Words near proprietary in the dictionary

  1. proprietariat
  2. proprietaries
  3. proprietarily
  4. proprietariness
  5. proprietarity
  6. proprietary
  7. proprietary eponym
  8. proprietary eponyms
  9. proprietary trading
  10. proprietess
  11. proprietesses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: proprietary (page history and authors); proprietary (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); proprietary (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); proprietary (Kannada Wiktionary) (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-proprietary.ogg.

Cite this entry: “proprietary.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/proprietary. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.