athlete
noun
Simple meaning
A person trained to compete in sports.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
athleetSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈæθlit
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
USCanada
A person trained to compete in sports
uscanada
A person who actively participates in physical sports, especially with great skill; a sportsperson.
A participant in any of a group of sporting activities including track and field, road running, cross country running and racewalking.
An exceptionally physically fit person.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A person trained to compete in sports
Used this way, athlete is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a sporting use: familiar to anyone who follows the game, and puzzling to anyone who does not.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Sports
- News/reporting
- Everyday conversation
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use athlete
- “The athlete trained hard every day to prepare for the marathon.”
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
Related to A person trained to compete in sports.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
A contest between athletes.
A contest between athletes.
The course of practice and exercise and diet undertaken by an athlete.
Enlarged heart commonly found among athletes trained for endurance.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.