protuberance

From French protubérance, from Latin prōtubērantia (“bulge; protuberance”), from prō + tūber (“swelling; protuberance”) + -antia (“-ance”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /pɹəʊˈtjuːbəɹəns/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /pɹoʊˈtuːbəɹəns/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

protuberance (plural protuberances)

1. A bulge, knob, swelling, spine, or anything that protrudes.

   Synonyms: bulge, bump, protrusion, tuberosity

   • 1941 August, “Notes and News: The Swiss South Eastern Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 376:

     For the most part they were small standard gauge 0-6-0 side tanks of the type illustrated, with long tapered chimneys and an unusual feature for the Continent in the shape of domeless boilers, the protuberance just behind the chimney being a sandbox.

   • 1979 November, Irene Corbally Kuhn, “Gourmet Holidays Taiwan”, in Gourmet‎, volume XXXIX, number 11, page 164:

     Oluanpi's lighthouse looks toward Lanyu, or Orchid Island, a tiny, rocky protuberance sixty-eight miles to the southeast and important because it is the home of the Yami, the smallest and most primitive tribe of aborigines in Taiwan.

   • 1989, Ben Aaronovitch, Remembrance of the Daleks:

     Ever since their creation the Daleks have been attempting to conquer and enslave as much of the universe as they could get their grubby little protuberances on.

   • 2019 April 10, qntm, “CASE HATE RED”, in There Is No Antimemetics Division, →ISBN, page 137:

     The orchestra is gone. All seventy of them. The things which have replaced them are not human but alien, ill-proportioned pillars of pinkish-brownish flesh. Each has, at its top, a heavy protuberance studded with goopy biological sensors and rubbery openings, and, sprouting from the very cap, lengths of various kinds of vile, off-coloured moss. They are draped in black and white fabrics, weirdly cut to either conceal or highlight their blobby, inconsistent body structures.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:protuberance.

• protuberant