tournament

The word “tournament” means a series of games or contests played to determine an overall winner. In plain terms, a competition made up of multiple matches or games to find an overall winner.

“Tournament” is pronounced TOOR-nuh-muhnt (/ˈtʊɹnəmənt/ in IPA).

Here is “tournament” used in a sentence: “She won the regional chess tournament.”

“Tournament” is a noun.

The word “tournament” comes from Old French. From Old French tornoiement, related to the verb tornoier, describing knights wheeling and jousting on horseback.

“Tournament” is a fairly common word in modern English, usually learned at around the B1 level.

“Tournament” has 2 distinct senses listed in this dictionary. The most common is: a series of games or contests played to determine an overall winner.

A tournament is usually a self-contained event where teams or players compete over a set period until one winner emerges, often by knockout. A league runs over a whole season, with everyone playing repeated fixtures and standings decided by accumulated points rather than a single final.

Common formats include knockout, or single-elimination, where one loss ends your run; double-elimination, which gives a second chance; and round-robin, where every entrant plays every other. Many large tournaments combine them, with group stages of round-robin play followed by a knockout final.

A match is a single game or contest between two sides. A tournament is the larger competition made up of many such matches, arranged so that results across all of them decide one overall winner. In short, a tournament contains many matches.

Well-known examples include the FIFA World Cup, Wimbledon, and the Masters in golf, along with chess and esports championships. Any structured series of contests that crowns a single overall winner, from a local darts night to a global cup, counts as a tournament.