Protuberance

//pɹoʊˈtuːbəɹəns// noun

noun ·Uncommon ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A bulge, knob, swelling, spine, or anything that protrudes.

    "For the most part they were small standard gauge 0-6-0 side tanks of the type illustrated, with long tapered chimneys and an unusual feature for the Continent in the shape of domeless boilers, the protuberance just behind the chimney being a sandbox."

  2. 2
    something that bulges out or is protuberant or projects from its surroundings wordnet
  3. 3
    the condition of being protuberant; the condition of bulging out wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
bulgebulgebumpprotrusionasperitybas relief

Example

More examples

"Apparently, in some toad species, to have a protuberance on their backs was more advantageous than to have a smooth back."

Etymology

From French protubérance, from Latin prōtubērantia (“bulge; protuberance”), from prō + tūber (“swelling; protuberance”) + -antia (“-ance”).

Related phrases

internal occipital protuberancemental protuberance

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