Just forget the words and sing along

Monday, March 21, 2005

Yay! My quest is complete! I've finally found the answer to something that's been bugging me for ages!

What is the proper term for a story in 4 parts?

We all know that "trilogy" is the word for a story in 3 parts. And, when the big boxed set of all the Alien films came out under the title "The Alien Quadrilogy," I looked at that and though, "Hmmm.... Something tells me that 'quadrilogy' isn't the right word."

So, after typing the odd search phrase into Google, and wishing that the Merriam-Webster Online Dictonary had a reverse look-up (type in the definition, they give you the word), I finally found it this morning at Wikipedia.org.

The proper term for a story in 4 parts is...

Tetrology.

Oh, and in case you're curious, in the course of my research I found the terms "pentalogy" and "quintology" used to describe a story in five parts. If anyone knows which of those is correct, or if both are, then let me know!

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