Protasis

//ˈpɹɒtəsɪs// noun

noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The first part of a play, in which the setting and characters are introduced.

    "It doubles itself in the middle of his life, reflects itself in another, repeats itself, protasis, epitasis, catastasis, catastrophe."

  2. 2
    A clause that expresses a contingent element in a conditional sentence.

    "In "I will be coming if this weather holds up", "if this weather holds up" is the protasis, and "I will be coming" is the apodosis."

Synonyms

All synonyms
antecedentantecedentbreakthroughconditionalforewordfront matter

Example

More examples

"It doubles itself in the middle of his life, reflects itself in another, repeats itself, protasis, epitasis, catastasis, catastrophe."

Etymology

From Late Latin protasis, from Ancient Greek πρότασις (prótasis), from προτείνω (proteínō, “put forward, tender, propose”), from πρό (pró) + τείνω (teínō, “stretch”).

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