Word.ws English Dictionary

protonyms

protonyms is the plural of protonym.

Meaning of protonym

Noun

protonym (plural protonyms)

  1. The first legitimate name of a taxon, on which the currently accepted name is based.
    • The protonym of Macroscyphus appears to be Nees von Esenbeck's (1817) [genus] Peziza ...1968, Mien A. Rifai, The Australasian Pezizales in the Herbarium of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
  2. (uncommon, prescriptive) The first/original entity after which another entity is named without the entities being related. If the entities are related, then the original entity is the eponym of the subsequent entities.

Questions about protonyms

What is protonyms the plural of?
Protonyms is the plural of protonym.

Words near protonyms in the dictionary

  1. protonymph
  2. protonymphal
  3. protonymphon
  4. protonymphons
  5. protonymphs
  6. protonyms
  7. protooncogene
  8. protooncogenes
  9. protooncogenic
  10. protooncoprotein
  11. protooncoproteins

Source and license

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