protasis

Noun

protasis (plural protases)

1. The first part of a play, in which the setting and characters are introduced.
   • It doubles itself in the middle of his life, reflects itself in another, repeats itself, protasis, epitasis, catastasis, catastrophe.1922, James Joyce, Ulysses
2. A clause that expresses a contingent element in a conditional sentence.
   • In "I will be coming if this weather holds up", "if this weather holds up" is the protasis, and "I will be coming" is the apodosis.
   • 2005 B. P. Bairan: An Introduction to Syllogistic Logic
     Every conditional statement is made up of two component statements. The component statement that follows the "if" is called antecedent (or the "implicans" or — rarely — the "protasis"), and the component statement that follows the "then" is...

   Synonyms:

   antecedent, conditional, hypothesis, implicans