What's the difference between hero and protagonist?

Hero


Definition:

  • (n.) An illustrious man, supposed to be exalted, after death, to a place among the gods; a demigod, as Hercules.
  • (n.) A man of distinguished valor or enterprise in danger, or fortitude in suffering; a prominent or central personage in any remarkable action or event; hence, a great or illustrious person.
  • (n.) The principal personage in a poem, story, and the like, or the person who has the principal share in the transactions related; as Achilles in the Iliad, Ulysses in the Odyssey, and Aeneas in the Aeneid.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Mendl's candy colours contrast sharply with the gothic garb of our hero's enemies and the greys of the prison uniforms – as well as scenes showing the hotel later, in the 1960s, its opulence lost beneath a drab communist refurb.
  • (2) They'd started so well, too, winger Oreste Corbatta putting Argentina ahead after three minutes in the 1958 groups, but the 1954 hero Helmut Rahn scored twice in an eventual 3-1 win for West Germany.
  • (3) One of her heroes, one of her mentors was Saul Alinsky,” he said, referring to the radical community organiser whose book, Rules for Radicals, he claimed contains an acknowledgement of Lucifer.
  • (4) Maggie and Joe Forber win the 2013 Unsung Hero (es) of the Year award.
  • (5) In the wake of the horrors of the second world war it was the proudest gift to a land fit for heroes, delivered at a time when the national debt made our current crisis look like an embarrassing bar tab.
  • (6) "With the full backing of British Gymnastics, the trainers who helped take Smith and Tweddle to Olympic glory are ready to turn the nation's pop stars, actors, newsreaders and chefs into heroes of the high bars and titans of the tumble track," it added.
  • (7) The former Massachusetts governor, like many Republicans, expected the Trump campaign to implode last summer, after he insulted Mexicans and said Arizona senator and 2008 Republican nominee John McCain was not a “war hero” because “I like people who weren’t captured.” This year, days after Trump did not immediately disavow an expression of support from David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, Romney said one of his sons was driving him to an airport when he asked: “When the grandkids ask ‘What did you do to stop Donald Trump ?’ what are you going to say?’” Facebook Twitter Pinterest Romney launches extensive attack on Trump: ‘A genius he is not’ That, Romney said, was the final push.
  • (8) Dickens's last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend , has a mysterious hero, John Rokesmith, who turns out to be someone different from the person we were told he was.
  • (9) At the end of World War II, when another generation of heroes returned home from combat, they built the strongest economy and middle class the world has ever known.
  • (10) Kafka's faceless and amoral heroes, on the other hand, inspire no sympathy at all.
  • (11) Thank God the heroes of SWAT-team prevented the worst.
  • (12) From campaigner to prisoner to President to global hero, Nelson Mandela will always be remembered for his dignity, integrity and his values of equality and justice.
  • (13) Northampton toiled manfully to seek a way back into the tie with Holmes, two-goal hero from the first match, making a number of threatening runs.
  • (14) So President Mujica may be thinking: "why not take the risk and embrace the possibility of becoming the first marijuana hero and the man who thwarted drug dealers?"
  • (15) André Villas-Boas Villas-Boas was only 33 when he won the Europa League with Porto Gianluca Vialli Sven-Göran Eriksson Pep Guardiola You got… Perfection You hero You star You've done very well there You've done well there You've done OK there Sorry to break it to you but that's a bad score Come on.
  • (16) "I saw Hutton in his prime; another time, another time," as his couplet about his cricketing hero, Sir Leonard Hutton, has it.
  • (17) What he liked best was to talk to the cricket pro, Bert Wensley, formerly of Sussex, about such heroes as Maurice Tate, Duleepsinhji and HT Bartlett, and to encourage Bert to enlarge on his reasons for describing Sir Home Gordon, Bart, the overlord of Sussex cricket, as a "shit" - the first time we heard that word.
  • (18) Seeing the performance later in Edinburgh, I was impressed by Briers' ability to encompass the hero's rage and madness.
  • (19) Reagan's youthful hero was FDR – another optimist, albeit a far steelier one –  who turned the federal government into the agent of recovery from the Great Depression and of victory in World War II.
  • (20) "The FA decision-makers can become the heroes that protected the national game.

Protagonist


Definition:

  • (n.) One who takes the leading part in a drama; hence, one who takes lead in some great scene, enterprise, conflict, or the like.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The Independent noted that one of the female protagonists yelled "You c***!"
  • (2) There are numerous other male protagonists out there in desperate need of a sex change.
  • (3) At times, they gained a momentum that took even the protagonists by surprise.
  • (4) Phase II is the attack and destruction of the allograft by these protagonists.
  • (5) Not relegate them to background characters in the service of a white cis-male fictional protagonist.” Both groups have drawn their conclusions from the film’s trailer.
  • (6) But the bedeviled foray also works as a potent allegory on the slow, vice-like workings of conscience, as guilt hunts down the protagonists with the shrieking remorselessness of Greek furies.
  • (7) We don’t need a man to help us or lead us … We’re protagonists who defend a Podemos for everyone.” Iglesias responded coolly, saying he was convinced there would be “far better candidates”.
  • (8) Owing to the poor quality of much of this research the claims of the protagonists of these therapies cannot be proved or disproved.
  • (9) The roles of each protagonist are related in detail, with pragmatism.
  • (10) In 90 engrossing minutes came comedy, controversy, drama, breathtaking moments and an eye-catching turn from the star protagonist himself.
  • (11) The novelist and critic Tom Bissell has described the protagonist's Jewish lawyer in 2002's Vice City as "an anti-Semitic parody of an anti-Semitic parody", while in the new game one of the main character's daughters has a tattoo that reads "skank", and one mission involves you helping a paparazzo capture a starlet's "low-hanging muff".
  • (12) "But where in Dostoevsky or Poe the protagonist experiences his double as a terrifying embodiment of his own otherness (and especially his own voraciousness and destructiveness), we barely notice the difference between ourselves and our online double.
  • (13) Despite the world-weary tone of a brutal review in the New York Times, which suggested that it added nothing new to the "groaning shelf" of homosexual literature, a story with an unashamedly gay protagonist unleashed a storm of protest in a country where sodomy was still illegal.
  • (14) It was probably all over for the idea of being stoned as a portal to a higher consciousness after the release of a film in which the two perma-baked protagonists drive a car with the numberplate MUF DVR.
  • (15) M∆tilda – spelt with an Alt-J – references Luc Besson's film Léon and is "fuelled by the shared demise of both the protagonist and antagonist".
  • (16) Protagonists of the method included Ambroise Paré, Thomas Fienus, Hieronymus Fabricius ab Aquapendente, Julius Casserius, and Johannes Scultetus.
  • (17) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gone Girl star Ben Affleck: ‘Usually the protagonist is full of shit’ - video interview Fincher’s film narrowly beat another new film, the horror prequel Annabelle , into second place.
  • (18) But the protagonists – Patty especially – are constantly making new discoveries about themselves: redemptive insights, lessons in the contradictoriness of the human heart.
  • (19) Writing about her novel, Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel has explained how she brought the protagonist Thomas Cromwell alive for the reader by giving him vivid memories.
  • (20) Another way of assessing the claim and counterclaim is to consider the characters of the protagonists.