Other forms: gymnasts
A gymnast is the athlete of flips, bars and perfect landings. Strength, flexibility and control, all at once.
The sport divides into artistic gymnastics on apparatus, rhythmic gymnastics with ribbons and hoops, and trampolining. Competitors are famously young, and the physical demands are extreme. The word comes from Greek and originally referred to exercising naked, which is what gymnasium means. The adjective is gymnastic, and mental gymnastics is a fine phrase for an argument that has to contort itself to work.
1noungymnastAn athlete who performs gymnastics.
“She trained as a gymnast from the age of six.”
A gymnast trained naked. Greek gymnos means naked, gymnazō is to exercise, and gymnastēs was the trainer of athletes, so the gymnasium was the place you stripped to work.
Proto-Indo-European
*negʷ-
Ancient Greek
γυμναστής — trainer of athletes
English, today
gymnast
Built from
Ancient Greek γυμναστής (“trainer of athletes”), from γυμνάζω (“I train naked, exercise”), from γυμνός (“naked”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA