Talk:Tritagonist

Why Delete?
This page should be kept. Many pages exist both on Wikipedia and Wiktionary, therefore the reason for proposed deletion isn't reasonable. I am a violinist (talk) 13:47, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Fourth most important character
Would this term be tetartagonist?? (I'm not asking if this term is widely used; I'm only asking what the term would be using the etymological pattern.) Georgia guy (talk) 19:22, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Numbers after cites?
I don't know if I'm missing out on a huge Wikipedia thing, but why are there numbers or symbols next to each inline citation? For example there could be... lorem ipsum[1]:451 --Michaelzeng7 (talk) 21:17, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The author appears to be indicating page numbers in the cited source. Last I looked this wasn't an acceptable way to handle this issue (I've used a better way in articles such as Delphine LaLaurie) but policy may have changed and in any case fixing its use here is not a high-priority task. - DustFormsWords (talk) 05:07, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Characters who are fifth and sixth in importance
Would the fifth most important character be the pemptagonist, and would sixth most important be hectagonist? I'm not sure if these terms are widely used, but is that what they'd be called? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 164.104.71.86 (talk) 15:35, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, but I don't think these terms are common enough to deserve Wikipedia articles. Georgia guy (talk) 01:10, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Those terms are extremely uncommon, and yes, "pemptagonist" would be an accurate term. I believe that "hectagonist", however, would not be a proper example of this type of terminology. Terms like "protagonist" and "deuteragonist" originate from the Greek prefixes of ordinal numbers. The prefix "proto" means first, or primary. Think "prototype", it means the first version of something. This also applies to "protagonist", meaning "the primary character". "Deutero" means "second", "trito" means "third", "tetarto" means "fourth", and "pempto" means "fifth". Here's why "hectagonist" couldn't work. "Hexa" does mean "six" in Greek, however, it refers to the value itself, not its ordinal reference. That would be "ecto", and so, the sixth most important character in a story would be referred to as an "ectagonist". The seventh grecian ordinal number prefix is called "ebdomo", and so the seventh-most important character would be an "ebdomagonist". The eighth is called "ogdo", and so the character would be an "ogdagonist". For nine, it's called "enato", and the character is an "enatagonist." Ten: "decato", and "decatagonist". Eleven: "endecato", and "endecatagonist". Lastly, twelve: "dodecatagonist", and the prefix: "dodecato". Mr. Cartinos (talk) 20:16, 29 June 2023 (UTC)


 * If an event occurs one time, it is said to occur "once." If it occurs a second time, it is said to occur "twice." The word for a third occurrence is "thrice," although that is rarely used nowadays. I suppose if someone wanted to, they could determine the spelling and pronunciation of words for more occurrences, but such terms would rarely be useful. Words like "thrice" and "tritagonist" beg the same question: "Who cares?"—Anita5192 (talk) 20:27, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Expanding stub article
I have added an "examples" section that gives examples of tritagonists in both popular and classical media. It was difficult to find sources for this, however, so it could stand to be filled out some more. Including examples of tritagonists in this article makes it easier for a general, non-theatrical audience to conceptualize the role or roles that a tritagonist can play in a narrative.

Also, I added information to the existing sections—I was able to find a more specific reference to the origins of the tritagonist character (Greek tragedy), and specifics are always useful when it comes to history. In addition, I added information about the order in which the protagonist, deuteragonist, and tritagonist would appear in early Greek theatre to accompany the existing fact about tritagonists often entering from the left.

Finally, I expanded the definition to include the roles that a tritagonist can play and the ways that they tend to interact with and/or support the protagonist's story. This provides a checklist of sorts for determining whether or not a character qualifies as a tritagonist. - BreadBrekker (talk) 18:33, 20 September 2023 (UTC)


 * I reverted it due to the use of unreliable sources such as self published blogs. This is a very well studied concept - there is no reason to resort to questionable sourcing. MrOllie (talk) 18:31, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Direction to some stronger sources would be appreciated. It was next to impossible to find any outside of single-sentence encyclopedic definitions. BreadBrekker (talk) 18:34, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Where did you look? Google scholar and Google books each return plenty of hits. MrOllie (talk) 18:52, 20 September 2023 (UTC)