Pro-martyr

adj, noun

adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The first martyr to die for a particular cause.

    "Such a man was John Brown. He was strong in his moral and mental nature, as well as in his physical nature. He was born to lead; and he led, and made himself the pro-martyr of a cause rapidly perfecting."

Adjective
  1. 1
    In favor of or supporting martyrdom or a group of martyrs.

    "Though not hearing the tellers' full stories in these passages, we are nonetheless reminded that neutrality was not a quality of storytelling. The pro-martyr stance of the statements above will only have been more dramatized in their story form."

Example

More examples

"Such a man was John Brown. He was strong in his moral and mental nature, as well as in his physical nature. He was born to lead; and he led, and made himself the pro-martyr of a cause rapidly perfecting."

Etymology

From pro- + martyr.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.