Protogynic

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Describing an organism, especially a fish or flower, whose female reproductive phase comes before its male phase in its life cycle
2. Showing female sexual maturity arriving earlier than male maturity, a pattern found in certain hermaphroditic animals and plants
3. Characterized by the development of female organs ahead of male ones, as seen in some sequential hermaphrodites and protogynous flowers

Etymology: Protogynic describes a plant or animal that changes sex from female to male during its life, a pattern found in some fish, such as wrasses and many coral reef species. The word is built from two Greek elements: "protos", meaning first, and "gyne", meaning woman or female, with the adjectival suffix "-ic" added. Its literal sense is therefore "first female," which describes the order of the change: the organism starts out female and later becomes male. The term is a modern scientific coinage made from classical Greek roots, not a word the ancient Greeks used for this biology. It belongs to the same family as "protandric," its opposite, which describes organisms that begin male and later become female. Both terms were formed on the same pattern, so that the pair mirrors each other in construction as well as in meaning.

Synonyms: protogynous

Antonyms: protandrous