Word.ws English Dictionary

prothonotary

prothonotary noun: a chief legal clerk or notary in Roman Byzantium, and (hence) in Rome.

Noun

prothonotary (plural prothonotaries)

  1. (historical, obsolete) A chief legal clerk or notary in Roman Byzantium, and (hence) in Rome.
  2. One of the seven prelates, constituting a college in the Roman Curia, whose office is to register pontifical acts and to make and preserve the official record of beatifications.
  3. A registrar or chief clerk in various courts of law, especially (US) in a county court, (Australia) in certain state Supreme Courts, (Canada) in Federal Court.
    • I accordingly did direct him how to enter an appearance with the prothonotary and to obtain a copy of the plaint or declaration.1808–10, William Hickey, Memoirs of a Georgian Rake, Folio Society 1995, p. 231
    • Prothonotary was a pretty impressive-sounding title for a clerk of court, but that’s how the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania rolled.2012, Melissa F. Miller, chapter 39, in Inadvertent Disclosure (The Sasha McCandless Series; Volume 1), e-book edition, Brown Street Books, →ISBN, page 7542
  4. (historical, Greek Orthodoxy) The chief secretary of the patriarch of Constantinople.

Forms of prothonotary

pluralprothonotaries
alternative formprotonotary

Origin of prothonotary

From Middle English prothonotarie, from Medieval Latin protonotarius, from Byzantine Greek πρωτονοτάριος (prōtonotários), from Ancient Greek πρῶτος (prôtos) + Byzantine Greek νοτάριος (notários), from Latin notārius (“notary”).

Words formed from prothonotary

Phrases with prothonotary

Questions about prothonotary

What does prothonotary mean?
Prothonotary means a chief legal clerk or notary in Roman Byzantium, and (hence) in Rome.
What part of speech is prothonotary?
Prothonotary is a noun.
What is the plural of prothonotary?
The plural of prothonotary is prothonotaries.

Words near prothonotary in the dictionary

  1. prothixene
  2. prothonotarial
  3. prothonotariat
  4. prothonotariats
  5. prothonotaries
  6. prothonotary
  7. prothonotary warbler
  8. prothonotary warblers
  9. prothonotaryship
  10. prothonotaryships
  11. prothoraces

Source and license

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