| n. | 1. | A proprietor or owner; one who has exclusive title to a thing; one who possesses, or holds the title to, a thing in his own right. | |||
| 2. | A body proprietors, taken collectively. | ||||
| 3. | (Eccl.) A monk who had reserved goods and effects to himself, notwithstanding his renunciation of all at the time of profession. | ||||
| a. | 1. | Belonging, or pertaining, to a proprietor; considered as property; owned;
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| Noun | 1. | proprietary - an unincorporated business owned by a single person who is responsible for its liabilities and entitled to its profits Synonyms: proprietorship |
| Adj. | 1. | proprietary - protected by trademark or patent or copyright; made or produced or distributed by one having exclusive rights; "`Tylenol' is a proprietary drug of which `acetaminophen' is the generic form" Antonyms: nonproprietary - not protected by trademark or patent or copyright; "nonproprietary products are in the public domain and anyone can produce or distribute them" |
PROPRIETARY. In its strict sense, this word signifies one who is master of
his actions, and who has the free disposition of his property. During the
colonial government of Pennsylvania, William Penn was called the
proprietary.
2. The domain which William Penn and his family had in the state, was,
during the Revolutionary war, divested by the act of June 28, 1779, from
that family and vested in the commonwealth for the sum which the latter paid
to them of one hundred and thirty thousand pounds sterling.
| 1. | proprietary - In marketroid-speak, superior; implies a product imbued with exclusive magic by the unmatched brilliance of the company's own hardware or software designers. | ||
| 2. | proprietary - In the language of hackers and users, inferior; implies a product not conforming to open-systems standards, and thus one that puts the customer at the mercy of a vendor who can inflate service and upgrade charges after the initial sale has locked the customer in. |