Word.ws English Dictionary

protoword

protoword noun: an early wordlike utterance produced by an infant before it has acquired a true language.

Noun

protoword (plural protowords)

  1. An early wordlike utterance produced by an infant before it has acquired a true language.
  2. A wordlike utterance produced by early people who had yet to develop full language capability; a word from a proto-language.

Forms of protoword

pluralprotowords

Origin of protoword

From proto- + word.

Questions about protoword

What does protoword mean?
Protoword means an early wordlike utterance produced by an infant before it has acquired a true language.
What part of speech is protoword?
Protoword is a noun.
What is the plural of protoword?
The plural of protoword is protowords.

Words near protoword in the dictionary

  1. protovertebrate
  2. protovertebrates
  3. protoviral
  4. protovirus
  5. protoviruses
  6. protoword
  7. protowords
  8. protowriting
  9. protoxid
  10. protoxide
  11. protoxides

Source and license

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