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Definition of "protomartyr" []

  • The first martyr in a cause. Used especially of the first Christian martyr, Saint Stephen. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "protomartyr" in a sentence
  • "Στέφανος is known as the protomartyr of Christianity and venerated by the Roman Catholic,"
  • "This revolutionary approach was announced by a woman painter, Anita Malfatti, “the protomartyr of modernism,” whose forward-looking paintings in her second exhibition, in 1917, were derided by Monteiro Lobato He claimed that she simply contributed her own “-ism” in her paintings where a horse and rider fall over: “I call this genre topple-ism”."
  • "Stephen, deacon and protomartyr, was stoned to death by the Sanhedrin because of a vision he testified to Acts 7:55-57:"