protocol
Pluralprotocols (some meanings)
Pluralprotocols (some meanings)
Formsprotocols
- 1An accepted code of conduct; the behavior considered acceptable in a particular situation or group.
Diplomatic protocol requires guests to wait until the host begins eating.
He ignored protocol and addressed the senator by her first name.
Similaretiquette, convention, decorum, custom
Note
Stretched from the court to ordinary life, protocol can cover anything with a right way to do it. The Guardian in 2010 wrote of those 'uncertain in the protocol of handshaking'. In the countable plural it names specific rules: Paul Bigland in Rail (2020) describes staff 'enforcing mask protocols' at stations. The uncountable singular describes etiquette, and the plural describes rules that can be enforced.
- 2The official rules and guidelines that heads of state and other dignitaries follow in relations with foreign representatives and in affairs of state.
Diplomatic protocol dictates the order in which foreign envoys are received.
The foreign ministry's chief of protocol arranged the seating for the summit.
Similaretiquette
Note
Ceremony at the level of states: who bows, who is received first, who sits where. Here the word is usually uncountable, as in diplomatic protocol, a breach of protocol, or the chief of protocol. Laura Johnson's 'A mwah too far' in The Guardian (2009) shows how closely it is watched. She sets the curtsey normally offered the Queen against an enthusiastic Obama embrace.
- 3In computing, a formal set of rules governing how data is sent and received, especially over a network.
Engineers designed a new protocol to speed up file transfers.
The router supports several network protocols at once.
Note
Computing took over the diplomat's word. Like the etiquette between states, a protocol fixes who speaks when and in what form, except that the parties are now machines. Protocols are usually named in full and then shortened to acronyms, as with XMPP, the extensible messaging and presence protocol. By 2021, crypto founders were stretching the word to cover platforms whose computer code effectively "runs the show."
- 4In health care, written instructions that authorize a licensed professional to begin, change, or end a medical or patient care order.
The oncology unit updated its chemotherapy protocol last year.
Under standing protocol, the paramedic administered the drug before reaching the hospital.
Note
In clinical work a protocol grants authority as much as it gives instructions. It lets a licensed professional begin, change or stop care without waiting for a new individual order. Care is given per protocol or under protocol, and the phrase marks a decision that follows an approved plan rather than one made case by case.
- 5A detailed, step-by-step plan for an experiment, written so the work can be done and repeated exactly.
The researchers published their protocol so others could replicate the study.
A small change to the protocol produced very different results.
Note
Reproducibility is the point. The protocol is written precisely enough that someone else can run the experiment again. Researchers follow, publish, revise or depart from a protocol, and the word implies the steps were fixed in advance rather than improvised. It shades into the clinical sense, where a written protocol governs patient care rather than an experiment.
- 6In some programming languages, a data type that declares a set of members which a class or other data type must implement.
In Swift, a struct can conform to more than one protocol.
The team defined a protocol so any data source could plug into the app.
Note
A contract written into a program's own types. Types are said to conform to or adopt a protocol. The protocol states which members must exist but not how they work, and the implementing class supplies that. Unlike the networking sense, which governs messages passing between machines, this protocol never leaves the code it is declared in.
- 7An amendment or addition made to an official treaty.
The Kyoto Protocol added binding emissions targets to the climate convention.
Several countries ratified the protocol within the year.
Note
Treaty law names these amendments as documents in their own right, capitalized and often dated. Philippe Sands's Principles of International Environmental Law (2002) cites the 1992 Protocol, which redefined terms such as 'ship', 'oil' and 'incident'. A protocol of this kind does not stand alone. It changes the wording or reach of the treaty it attaches to, so the two texts are read together.
- 8The first-hand notes in which observations are written down as an experiment is carried out.
Researchers compared their lab protocols to settle the dispute over the readings.
The experiment's protocol recorded each temperature as it was measured.
Note
The laboratory's raw record rather than its recipe. In Gye and Purdy's The Cause of Cancer (1931), 'the protocol of the experiment' sets down what was actually done, down to 16 c.c. of minced tissue ground with sand. Keep it distinct from the method to be followed: this protocol looks back at what happened, while that one looks forward to what should be done.
- 9The minutes or official record of a negotiation or transaction; especially an officially drawn-up document forming the legal basis for later agreements.
The merchants deposited the protocol with the notary as proof of their bargain.
Each clause of the protocol was witnessed and sealed before the parties departed.
Similarrecord
Note
Now mostly a word of historical writing: Thomas Campbell's Frederick the Great and his Times (1842) has a privy councillor draw up a protocol as the king hands his crown and scepter to the prince-royal. The name preserves a detail of old manuscripts. Byzantine Greek prōtókollon, from prôtos "first" and kólla "glue", was the first sheet glued onto a manuscript. The name for the papyrus's first leaf later came to mean the record itself.
- 10The fixed official wording that opens or closes certain formal documents, such as charters and papal bulls.
The protocol of the charter named the issuing king and invoked divine authority.
Clerks copied the protocol of each bull exactly as custom required.
Note
A term from the study of formal documents. It names the fixed wording that frames a charter or papal bull, as opposed to the business the document deals with. It usually takes an of-phrase naming the document: Archivum Historiae Pontificiae (1985) speaks of 'the protocol of the bull' becoming formulaic by John XVIII's pontificate. Like the papyrus roll's first leaf, it belongs to the edge of the text.
- 11An official mark typically appearing on the first sheet of a papyrus roll, or that sheet itself.
The protocol of the papyrus roll bore the stamp of the official workshop.
Tax records were written below the protocol that opened the roll.
Note
The literal sense, and the one the word's name describes. Byzantine Greek prōtókollon, from prôtos 'first' and kólla 'glue', was the first sheet glued onto a manuscript. In Late Latin, protocollum was the first sheet of a volume, where the contents and errata were written. Leila Avrin's Scribes, Script, and Books (1991) follows the marked opening sheet into the Islamic period, when protocols were bilingual, in Greek and Arabic.
- 12In Christian liturgy, the opening of the preface, said directly after the Sursum corda exchange.
The protocol of the preface opens with thanks directed to God.
On feast days the protocol leads into a longer, more solemn preface.
Note
A liturgist's term for the opening of the preface, where the celebrant takes up the people's response from the dialogue just before. Uwe Michael Lang's The Roman Mass (2022) flags it as a technical term. Its shape is old: Virgilio T.J. Suerte Felipe (2010) traces it, with minor changes, from the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus in 215 AD to the 2002 Missale Romanum.
Less common meanings
- 13A formal record of a diplomatic meeting or negotiation, and in later use a draft of agreed terms meant to take effect through a subsequent treaty.
The ministers signed the protocol that their governments would later turn into a treaty.
The terms of this protocol formed the basis for the Treaty of London signed by the British, French and Russian governments on 6 July 1827.
1970, Matthew Smith Anderson, The Great Powers and the Near EastNote
In older diplomacy the protocol came first and the treaty followed. Matthew Smith Anderson's The Great Powers and the Near East (1970) describes a protocol whose terms became the Treaty of London of 1827. This ordering is now rare, and later usage often puts the protocol after the treaty, as an amendment to it. In older diplomatic history, read protocol as a preliminary settlement waiting for a treaty to give it force.
- 14To set something down as a protocol; to record it officially.
The secretary was instructed to protocol the terms before the parties left.
Officials would protocol each transaction in the town register.
Note
A verb English has let go, meaning to set a matter down formally as a protocol. Anyone reviving it for period flavor should know that the spelling splits, as with travel. American usage writes protocoled and protocoling, and British usage writes protocolled and protocolling. The third-person form, protocols, is identical to the noun plural.
- 15To draft protocols or preliminary versions of documents, or to issue protocols formally.
Throughout the negotiations the secretaries continued to protocol late into the night.
Serene Highnesses, who sit there protocolling and manifestoing, and consoling mankind!
1837, Thomas Carlyle, The French RevolutionNote
Without an object, the verb names the activity itself: endless drafting and issuing. Carlyle's The French Revolution (1837) shows what it was good for, which was mockery. His 'Serene Highnesses, who sit there protocolling and manifestoing' are rulers producing paper instead of action. He pairs it with another coined verb, and the British double l follows the split described under the transitive verb.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of protocol apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origin
English borrowed this from Middle French protocolle, protocole ("document, record"), from Late Latin protocollum, meaning the first sheet of a volume on which contents and errata were written. That came from Byzantine Greek prōtókollon ("first sheet glued onto a manuscript"), from prôtos ("first") plus kólla ("glue"). It is a doublet of collage, collagen, and colloid.