Protocol

How to spell protocol

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce protocol

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does protocol mean?

1. nounThe accepted system of formal rules and correct conduct, especially in diplomatic or official settings.
2. nounA fixed, detailed plan or set of steps governing how something is to be carried out.
3. nounA standard set of rules that governs how data is transmitted between computers or devices.

Protocol in a sentence

• The ambassador followed strict protocol when greeting the visiting head of state.

• The nurses followed the hospital protocol for handling the medication.

• The website loads securely because it uses an encrypted transfer protocol.

• Raising a complaint above your manager breaks office protocol.

• Every fire drill must adhere to the building's emergency protocol.

• Two devices cannot communicate unless they share the same network protocol.

Where does protocol come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word travels back to the Greek protokollon, which literally meant 'first glue' or 'first sheet glued on'. It combined protos, meaning 'first', with kolla, meaning 'glue', and originally referred to the leaf glued to the front of a manuscript or roll that recorded its contents and authentication. Medieval Latin took it up as protocollum to mean the first draft or official record of a document, and French shaped it into protocole, the term clerks used for the formal minutes of a transaction. English borrowed it in the early 1500s with that bureaucratic sense, and only in the nineteenth century did it widen into the diplomatic 'rules of correct conduct', and later still into the scientific and computing meanings. The 'proto' opening is the easy half to remember; the trap is the single 'l' ending, a quiet leftover from that Greek word for glue.

How the word is built

• proto- (first)
• col (from Greek kolla: glue)
• -ol