"protean" is an accepted and correct word in written English.
You can use it to describe a state of being extremely changeable or variable. For example, "The protean nature of the English language makes it particularly difficult to learn."
But Stravinsky was – like his great contemporary Picasso – a restless, protean genius, incapable of treading water.
Water, despite its protean appearance, has a lot of internal structure, particularly when it is cool.
For an otherwise protean woman, such sentiments probably do come from conviction.
But even these protean stem cells were thought to be limited in the types of cell they could yield.However, as a paper published in this week's Science suggests, such adult stem cells are far more versatile than most researchers had imagined.
A 5-CD set from Riverside ("Sonny Rollins, The Freelance Years": 5RCD-4427-2) characteristicaracteristic breadth of his invention, tackling old chestnuts and venturesome originals with the same protean intelligence.Mr Rollins, happily, is still alive, but much of the current state of jazz is being shaped by a 39-year-old Young Turk trumpeter and composer, Wynton Marsalis.
But as Lula has so far shown next-door in Brazil, ideology can count for less than a commitment to responsible economic policies and the rule of law.Peronism, that most protean of South American political movements, has survived Argentina's collapse.
Entertainment will be on tap to match our moods, while our physical environment, from the view through our windows to the shape of our rooms and the furniture inside them, will have the protean ability to adapt itself to our desires and needs.
Instead liberalism is a protean set of beliefs in progress, scepticism towards authority and respect for individuals that have been central to the formation of modern Western democracy.
He has a Jesuit education, a prodigious intellect, a fine pedigree (his father, Pat Brown, was one of the state's best and most popular governors) and a protean political identity that allows him to become almost any sort of candidate, as needed.
In an organisation as protean as the WHO, her executive instincts may have gone too far.
