Protogynous

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Describing an organism, typically a fish or flowering plant, whose female reproductive organs mature before its male ones do
2. Having the female phase of reproduction come first, before the male phase develops, in certain hermaphroditic species
3. Exhibiting sequential hermaphroditism in which the female function appears early and male function follows later in life

Etymology: Protogynous describes organisms, most famously certain reef fish, that begin life as females and later change into males. The word is built from "proto-", the Greek prefix meaning "first" or "earlier", and "-gynous", from the Greek "gynē", meaning "woman", with the suffix that marks something as having a particular kind of female character. Put together, the term means "female first", the mirror image of "protandrous", where the sequence runs the other way. The "-gyn-" element is the same root found in words such as "gynecology" and "misogyny", which is why the word sounds so clearly tied to female biology. Its meaning, though, depends on the sequence of change rather than on any single moment, so the prefix does the real work of marking the order of the two stages.

Synonyms: protogynic

Antonyms: protandrous