Olympiad

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A biennial or quadrennial festival of sports, where athletes from around the world compete in various disciplines to showcase their talents and sportsmanship
2. A multi-sport event held at regular intervals, typically featuring athletes representing their nations in contests across numerous athletic disciplines
3. A recurring international competition that showcases athletes from various nations competing in multiple sports and demonstrating their skills and dedication

Etymology: The word's most surprising twist is that the "Olympiad" originally measured time, not competition. In ancient Greece, an Olympiad was the four-year period between one Olympic Games and the next, and Greeks counted years by it. The name comes from Olympia, the town where the games were held, combined with a suffix that forms feminine nouns, and ultimately from Mount Olympus or the Olympian Zeus, to whom the games were dedicated. Over the centuries the word passed through Latin and Old and Middle French into English, where it appeared in the plural forms "Olimpiades" and "Olympias" and carried senses of the ancient games, the four-year interval, and even an intense battle or contest. The modern sense of an international multi-sport competition is a later development, built on the Olympic Games themselves. The meaning of "olympiad" as a term for academic contests modeled on the Olympic Games came from the International Mathematical Olympiad. Its name was calqued from the Romanian "Olimpiada Internațională de Matematică," and its success popularized the word for other academic competitions aspiring to Olympic prestige.