Word.ws English Dictionary

protirement

protirement noun: early retirement from professional work with the positive idea of pursuing something more fulfilling.

Noun

protirement (uncountable)

  1. Early retirement from professional work with the positive idea of pursuing something more fulfilling.
    • 1961. George Jean Nathan, Henry Louis Mencken The American Mercury, p. 92,
      In other words, retirement connotes regression, whereas protirement would mean progression. ... Arthur Godfrey was right! "Retirement" is a dirty word.
    • Retire? Thats something you do to a wheel. The authors suggest Protirement instead1998, John S. Murphy, Frederic M. Hudson The Joy of Old, Geode Press, 1998, (Amazon.Com book review)

Origin of protirement

Blend of pro- + retirement; coined by Arthur Godfrey, according to the article Let's Protire, The American Mercury, January 1961.

Questions about protirement

What does protirement mean?
Protirement means early retirement from professional work with the positive idea of pursuing something more fulfilling.
What part of speech is protirement?
Protirement is a noun.

Words near protirement in the dictionary

  1. protiofate
  2. protionamide
  3. protip
  4. protips
  5. protirelin
  6. protirement
  7. protist
  8. protista
  9. protistal
  10. protistan
  11. protistans

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: protirement (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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