# tournament

/ˈtʊɹnəmənt/ (US) · /tˈɔːnəmənt/ (UK)

Source: https://englishreference.com/word/tournament
Updated: 2026-06-19

## Senses

### 1. sport/game competition

noun · CEFR B1

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

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

- Our local school won the regional basketball tournament last weekend.
- The grandmaster secured his victory in the international chess tournament after a grueling final round that lasted over five hours.

### 2. medieval knight contest

noun · CEFR C1 · Archaic

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

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

- The king invited the bravest knights to compete in a grand tournament.
- Historical records describe the 14th-century tournament as a lavish display of pageantry where knights demonstrated their prowess before the royal court.

### 3. graph theory

noun · CEFR C2 · Technical

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

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

- In our math class, we learned how to draw a tournament with four points.
- The researcher utilized tournament graphs to model the possible outcomes of round-robin competitions where no ties are permitted.

## Examples

- Our local team won the football tournament last weekend.
- The school organizes a chess tournament every spring to find the best player in the district.
- Despite entering the tournament as an unseeded underdog, the young athlete progressed through the qualifying rounds to reach the final match on center court.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.