Word.ws English Dictionary

protonotary

protonotary is the alternative spelling of prothonotary.

Meaning of prothonotary

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
  4. (historical, Greek Orthodoxy) The chief secretary of the patriarch of Constantinople.

Forms of protonotary

pluralprotonotaries

Questions about protonotary

What is protonotary the alternative spelling of?
Protonotary is the alternative spelling of prothonotary.

Words near protonotary in the dictionary

  1. protonophores
  2. protonophoric
  3. protonosphere
  4. protonospheres
  5. protonotaries
  6. protonotary
  7. protons
  8. protonym
  9. protonymph
  10. protonymphal
  11. protonymphon

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: protonotary (page history and authors); 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: “protonotary.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/protonotary. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.