Champions

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Individuals or teams who have won a competition or contest ; persons who actively support or defend a cause or individual
2. Those recognized as victors in organized contests ; advocates who promote or protect particular ideas or people
3. Competitors who attain first place in events or challenges ; champions who stand up for and endorse certain principles or persons

Etymology: The word "champions" is simply the plural of "champion", so its story is really the story of the singular. Its ancestor is Latin "campus", meaning a field or open plain. That Latin word passed into the Germanic languages of the early Middle Ages, where it became a word for a battlefield, and from there for a fighter who went out onto that field. In the Frankish world, a "kampijō" was a combat soldier, and the Medieval Latin "campio" took the sense of a combatant in a duel. Old French then carried the word into English as "champion", first in the sense of a man who fought on another's behalf in a trial by combat. The meaning of winning a contest came later, once the idea of a fighter standing for a cause or person broadened into the idea of being the best in a contest. Champions are, in a sense, still the people who hold the field.

Synonyms: winners, defenders, supporters

Antonyms: losers, opponents