noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   An athletic contest consisting of ten events which includes sprinting, hurdling, jumping, and throwing over a span of two days.

   "He entered U.C.L.A. in 1954 and played for the renowned coach John Wooden’s basketball team there while training for decathlons."

2. 2
   an athletic contest consisting of ten different events wordnet
3. 3
   A contest in science and math proving skill.

Synonyms

All synonyms

boutcontestdouble headerdouble-headerdoublesevent

Example

More examples

"If you participate in a decathlon you'll be throwing a discus at some point."

Etymology

From dec- + -athlon, coined for the 1912 Summer Olympics in analogy to the word pentathlon.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.