Pentathlon

noun

noun ·3 syllables ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An ancient athletics discipline, featuring five events: stadion, wrestling, long jump, javelin and discus
  2. 2
    an athletic contest consisting of five different events wordnet
  3. 3
    Ellipsis of women's pentathlon (“a 20th-century athletics discipline for women, the women's counterpart of the men's decathlon, the predecessor to the women's heptathlon, featuring five events: hurdles, shot put, high jump, long jump, and a run”). abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsis
  4. 4
    Ellipsis of modern pentathlon, a discipline with five events based on late-19th century basic military skills. abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsis

    "In the end, why not be happy with both, with the BMXes and the pentathlons, with the swans of synchro and the Quasimodos of wrestling? Sweet."

Synonyms

All synonyms
ancient greek pentathlonancient pentathlonboutcontestdecathlondouble header

Example

More examples

"In the end, why not be happy with both, with the BMXes and the pentathlons, with the swans of synchro and the Quasimodos of wrestling? Sweet."

Etymology

Borrowed from Ancient Greek πένταθλον (péntathlon), from πέντε (pénte, “five”) + ἆθλον (âthlon, “contest”). By surface analysis, penta- + -athlon.

Related phrases

snow pentathlonlong jumpmodern pentathlon

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