What does "tournament" mean?

1. (sport/game competition) a series of games or matches where players or teams compete to find a winner. 2. (medieval knight contest) a historical event where knights fought each other to practice for war. 3. (graph theory) a special kind of diagram in math where every point is connected to every other point by a line with an arrow.

tournament

US //ˈtʊɹnəmənt// UK //tˈɔːnəmənt// tour·na·ment

1 sport/game competition (n.)
B1 Intermediate Sport

a series of games or matches where players or teams compete to find a winner.

a series of contests in which a number of players or teams take part, typically resulting in a single champion.

Example

Our local school won the regional basketball tournament last weekend.

Example

The grandmaster secured his victory in the international chess tournament after a grueling final round that lasted over five hours.
2 medieval knight contest (n.)
C1 Advanced Archaic

a historical event where knights fought each other to practice for war.

a medieval sporting event consisting of a series of chivalric competitions, such as jousting, intended as military training.

Example

The king invited the bravest knights to compete in a grand tournament.

Example

Historical records describe the 14th-century tournament as a lavish display of pageantry where knights demonstrated their prowess before the royal court.
- joust

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3 graph theory (n.)
C2 Proficiency Technical Math

a special kind of diagram in math where every point is connected to every other point by a line with an arrow.

a directed graph formed by orienting each edge of a complete undirected graph.

Example

In our math class, we learned how to draw a tournament with four points.

Example

The researcher utilized tournament graphs to model the possible outcomes of round-robin competitions where no ties are permitted.

Origin

From Old French tornoiement (Modern French tournoiement) from the verb tornoier.