Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Firstborn; primitive or original, as organized matter.

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word protogenal.

Examples

  • It seems to me more consistent with the present phase of dynamical science and the observed graduations of living things to suppose the sarcode or the "protogenal" jelly-speck should be formable through the concurrence of conditions favouring such combination of their elements, and involving a change of force productive of their contractions and extensions, molecular attractions, and repulsions -- and the sarcode has so become, from the period when its irrelative repetitions resulted in the vast indefinite masses of the "eozoon," exemplifying the earliest process of "formification" or organic crystallisation -- than that all existing sarcodes or "protogenes" are the result of genetic descent from

    The World's Greatest Books — Volume 15 — Science Various 1909

  • A speck of protogenal jelly or sarcode, if alive, shows analogous relations to certain substances; but the soft yielding tissue allows the part next the attractive matter to move thereto, and then, by retraction, to draw such matter into the sarcodal mass, which overspreads, dissolves, and assimilates it.

    The World's Greatest Books — Volume 15 — Science Various 1909

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.