Other forms: tournaments
A tournament is a competition run in rounds, where the losers drop out until one is left standing. Sixty-four names on the wall chart on the first morning, two on the last.
It is the word for the big organised events: a chess tournament, a tennis tournament, the World Cup and every qualifying stage under it. One match is not a tournament — you need the rounds. Tournaments come with their own furniture of words: brackets, seeds, group stages, knockout rounds, a final. The oldest sense is the medieval one, knights on horseback riding at each other for prizes, and that picture still hangs around the word in fantasy books and films.
1nountournamentA competition made up of many games or rounds, played until one winner is left.
“She was knocked out of the tournament in the second round.”
synonyms: competition, contest
2nouncontestA contest between knights on horseback in the Middle Ages.
“The castle held a tournament that lasted three days.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
tournament is a competition.
Tournament came into English from Old French tornoiement, built on the verb tornoier. It arrived in the age of armour and outlived it: the shape of the word has barely moved in seven hundred years, while what it names went from lances and horses to chess clocks and tennis courts.
Old French
tornoiement
English, today
tournament
From Old French tornoiement (Modern French tournoiement) from the verb tornoier.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA