Protirement

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Early retirement from professional work with the positive idea of pursuing something more fulfilling. uncountable

    "1961. George Jean Nathan, Henry Louis Mencken The American Mercury, p. 92, In other words, retirement connotes regression, whereas protirement would mean progression. ... Arthur Godfrey was right! "Retirement" is a dirty word."

Example

More examples

"1961. George Jean Nathan, Henry Louis Mencken The American Mercury, p. 92, In other words, retirement connotes regression, whereas protirement would mean progression. ... Arthur Godfrey was right! "Retirement" is a dirty word."

Etymology

Blend of pro- + retirement; coined by Arthur Godfrey, according to the article Let's Protire, The American Mercury, January 1961.

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