Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Sensing pain, pressure, heat, or cold in a nonspecific manner, usually without localizing the stimulus. Used especially of certain sensory nerves.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Pertaining to the original lesion of a disease; primary.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Relating to a sensory nerve that detects the presence of a stimulus without determining its location.
  • adjective Relating to first symptoms of a disease, as in the sense of protopathic bias

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From Medieval Greek prōtopathēs, affected first, from Greek prōtopathein, to feel first : prōto-, proto- + pathos, experience, feeling.]

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