Polygender means more than one gender. Not a gender that is hard to pin down: several, with edges between them, each one recognisably itself. For some people they run at the same time; for others they take turns. The count is the point, not the movement. Trigender is what you get when the count comes out three. Honestly, repeatedly, and it will not go lower.
Both are small words with little written about them, and both pages say so. Definitions vary from person to person. Some fold bigender under polygender, some use multigender instead, some say polygender means strictly more than two. Nobody holds the deciding vote. What follows is a description offered to you, not a ruling.
How to tell them apart
- Count, more than once, in different moods. Three every time, the same three: trigender. A number that will not sit still, runs higher than three, or cannot honestly be counted: polygender.
- Name the cast. Trigender is a closed set; you know who is in it, even if one of them has no word. Polygender does not require you to be able to list them.
- Try the two words in your mouth. If "several" already feels too vague, trigender. If "three" feels like a claim you could not stand behind next month, polygender.
More likely Trigender
- Bigender accounts for two of you and leaves one standing in the corner.
- Your wardrobe splits three ways and you could point at which shelf belongs to which.
- You have had the thought: can I not just say nonbinary and be done. And then it stayed three anyway.
More likely Polygender
- Someone asked your gender and you started a list, then heard yourself apologising for the length of it.
- You can name one of them clearly, there is another you have never managed to describe out loud, and the total is not something you would swear to.
- "Both" is too small, and so is every specific number you have tried.
When both words are honestly available
- Always, in one direction. Trigender is polygender with a number attached, so a trigender person can use the wider word and lose nothing but precision.
- Some people use trigender in private and the broader word in public because it needs less explaining. Both pages call that practical rather than contradictory.
What people get wrong
Trigender means man, woman and both.
Sometimes. Often not. The third is frequently not a blend of the first two but a separate thing with nothing to do with them, and it is usually the hardest one to put into words.
Polygender and trigender are both just genderfluid.
Fluid describes movement; these describe a count. Plenty of people are both. Plenty never move at all: the several are simply always there, layered.
Questions people ask
- What is the difference between trigender and polygender?
- Number. Trigender is exactly three, and the same three each time. Polygender is more than one without saying how many, and does not require you to be able to count them. If you have landed on three repeatedly, over years, the narrower word fits. If the number will not hold still, the wider one will save you arguments.
- Can one of the three be agender?
- Yes. The Trigender page says agender is often one of the three, the empty one that arrives and switches everything off. The Polygender page says the same: one of yours might be a real, specific absence sitting alongside the others. Having it in the set is different from it being the whole answer.