athletics
noun
Form of athletic , plural of athletic.
Simple meaning
A group of sporting activities including track and field, road running, cross country and racewalking.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
athlehtiksSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
æθˈlɛtɪks
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
sportsespecially british
A group of sporting activities including track and field, road running, cross country and racewalking.
sportsespecially us
Physical activities such as sports and games requiring stamina, fitness and skill.
ussports
Nickname for many athletic teams whose full name includes "Athletics".
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B1 · Intermediate
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A group of sporting activities including track and field, road running, cross country and racewalking.
Used this way, athletics is a word tied to one variety of English 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
- Regional
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Uncommon in everyday speech
Where it naturally appears
- Sports
- News/reporting
- Everyday conversation
Usage note
Mainly used in British English, so it may read as unusual elsewhere.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use athletics
- “Our school has a strong program for various track and field athletics.”
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Physical / active
Nickname / team
Other combinations
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
Relating to or befitting athletics or athletes.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
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What Does It Mean Here?
Words can change meaning depending on context.
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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.