A lot vs. Alot: 9 Grammatical Pitfalls
1848, from German Protoplasma (1846), used by German botanist Hugo von Mohl (1805-1872), on notion of "first-formed," from Greek proto- "first" (see proto-) + plasma "something molded" (see -plasm).
The word was in Late Latin with a sense of "first created thing," and it might have existed in ecclesiastical Greek in a different sense. It was used 1839 by Czech physiologist Johannes Evangelista Purkinje (1787-1869) to denote the gelatinous fluid found in living tissue. The modern meaning is a refinement of this. This word prevailed, though German language purists preferred Urschleim "original mucus."
protoplasm pro·to·plasm (prō'tə-plāz'əm)
The complex, semifluid, translucent substance that constitutes the living matter of plant and animal cells and manifests the essential life functions of a cell. Composed of proteins, fats, and other molecules suspended in water, it includes the nucleus and cytoplasm.
the cytoplasm and nucleus of a cell. The term was first defined in 1835 as the ground substance of living material and, hence, responsible for all living processes. Advocates of the protoplasm concept implied that cells were either fragments or containers of protoplasm. The weakness of the concept was its inability to account for the origin of formed structures within the cell, especially the nucleus. Today the term is used to mean simply the cytoplasm and nucleus. The word protoplasm is somewhat unpopular in modern biology, although the term protoplasmic streaming is commonly used to describe the movement of the cytoplasm.