The term "paucimannose" (occasionally spelled as "pauci-mannose") was coined in the early 1990s glycobiology literature Paucimannose utilises the prefix "pauci" meaning few or small in Latin and the suffix "mannose" indicating glycans involving mannose-terminating glycans.
The phrases protein paucimannosylation and paucimannosidic proteins are commonly used in the literature to describe paucimannose-modified glycoproteins displaying intact structural and functional integrity. In contrast, the oligosaccharides themselves are often referred to as paucimannosidic, low mannose, and truncated glycans or other less conventional nomenclature.
A simple shorthand nomenclature has been proposed as a convenient way to name the individual paucimannosidic glycan structures, e.g. M3F denotes ManGlcNAcFuc.