Hello,
If a dualogy is 2 works and a trilogy is 3 works, what are the correct words for 4,5,6... works?
PHH
jabba the drunk (love that handle) asks: If a dualogy is 2 works and a trilogy is 3 works, what are the correct words for 4,5,6... works?
If it's Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy it's still a trilogy no matter how many books there are.
what are the correct words for 4,5,6... works?
a box set?
Well, I'm guessing now...
4 = Quadrology or quadrilogy ?
5 = Quintology or quintilogy ?
6 = Sextology or sextilogy ?
Help! This is confusing.
Faldage says:
If it's Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy it's still a trilogy no matter how many books there are.That's right. On the cover of the paperback edition of
Mostly Harmless, at the bottom in friendly white letters, it says: "The fifth book in the trilogy".
I think that settles any further argument, don't you?
In reply to:
Well, I'm guessing now...
4 = Quadrology or quadrilogy ?
5 = Quintology or quintilogy ?
6 = Sextology or sextilogy ?
Help! This is confusing.
jabba,
At the risk of sounding rude, why did you post the question if you were going to ignore the first, best and only sensible answer you got, namely, from tsuwm:
tetralogy = 4 works
pentalogy = 5 works?
Check these two words out in http://www.onelook.com/ and you will find that they return the definitions you were expecting. Your alternatives above do not.
There is also quartet for four works, see Lawrence Durrell's "Alexandria Quartet".
Bingley
Where do you get 'dualogy'? The Greek prefix for 'two' is di or occasionally dyo; thus 'dilogy', though that doesn't occur in Chambers's. For one it would be 'monology', if there was call for such a term.
Beyond that: tetra-, penta- hexa-, hepta- (we have all the chemists joining in a chorus now), octa-, ennea- (oops, wrong-footed the chemists there, who'd expect nona-), deca-, hendeca-, dodeca-, triskaideca-, tetrakiskaideca-, and so on (with option variation between c and k) up to icosa- or eicosa- '20'.
Now I bluff slightly but I think we go hencosa- '21', dicosa-, tricosa-, tetracosa-, pentacosa-, up to triaconta- '30', then hentriaconta-, ditriaconta-, tritriaconta- etc. And so to tetraconta- '40', pentaconta- '50' k.t.l..
A group of a hundred connected plays would be a hecatology... I don't think I can do the compound numbers between there and chiliology '1000' and myriology '10 000'.
N.B. 'Dialogue' doesn't contain di 'two': it's sometimes mistakenly supposed to be between just two people.
>thus 'dilogy', though that doesn't occur in Chambers's.
dilogy is used in rhetoric to mean "the use of an ambiguous or equivocal expression; the word or expression so used", from dilogia ambiguity -- I find nothing to suggest a homonym (which would make dilogy self-referential... :).
In reply to:
a hundred plays would be a hecatology
and a hundred obituary notices would be a hecatomb.
