protrude

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin prōtrūdō (“to thrust or push forward”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} from prō- (“forward”) and trūdō (“to thrust, push”),^[2][3][4][7] from Proto-Indo-European *treud- (“to press, push, squeeze”),^[3][4] the root of threat.^[3][8][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

To thrust an object forward, to drive onward: 1554, in J. Proctor's Historie of Wyates Rebellion, according to the OED's revised entry and Merriam-Webster Unabridged.^[2][8] Older accounts start later, with the 1610s in Etymonline,^[3] 1610–20 in Dictionary.com^[9] and 1620 in Barnhart.^[5]

Semantic evolution

The earliest sense was pushing a detached object onward, and Johnson (1755) still defined the word as "to thrust forward", quoting Locke on the stomach that "protrudes" food into the guts.^[10][2] This died out in the 19th century.^[2][11] A use of something shooting out on its own appears in Bacon in 1626.^[2][5] In 1638, in a translation of Bacon, the verb first took an organ or part as object, such as the tongue.^[2][8] The usual modern sense, of something sticking out beyond a surface, is recorded by the OED from 1704,^[2] though Etymonline dates "jut out" to the 1620s and the Shorter Oxford puts the intransitive in the early 17th century.^[3][11] Thackeray used it figuratively in 1840 for putting forward obtrusively, a sense now obsolete.^[2][11]

Timeline

• 1554 – to thrust forward, push or drive onward (obsolete by 1839).^[2][8]
• 1626 – intransitive, to shoot out, in Bacon (obsolete).^[2][5]
• 1638 – to push out an organ or part so that it sticks out.^[2] Etymonline dates it to the 1640s.^[3]
• 1704 – intransitive, to project beyond a surface, to stick out.^[2]
• before 1776 – to bring a rash to the surface (obsolete and rare).^[2]
• 1840 – figurative, to put forward obtrusively, in Thackeray (obsolete).^[2][11]

Meanings

Verb

1. To stick out or jut beyond a surface or the parts around it: A rusty nail protruded from the plank.^[12][8][2]
2. To push something out so that it sticks out: The lizard protruded its tongue.^[12][8][2]
3. (obsolete, 1554–1839) To thrust something forward; to drive it along.^[2][11][8]

Word family

• protrudent
• protrusible
• protrusion
• protrudable

Related words

• threat
• intrude
• extrude
• abstruse

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
10. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
11. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins