olympiad

noun

olym·​pi·​ad ə-ˈlim-pē-ˌad 

ō-

variants often Olympiad

1

: one of the 4-year intervals between Olympic Games by which time was reckoned in ancient Greece

2

: a quadrennial celebration of the modern Olympic Games

also : a competition or series of competitions resembling an olympiad especially in variety or challenge

Examples of olympiad in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

America’s women’s ballers have won Olympic gold for the past eight Olympiads without dropping a game in that span, dating back to the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. — Ken Sugiura, AJC.com, 8 July 2026

Performance That Relies On Deep Institutional Reasoning Frontier models are extraordinary at problems that are truly novel, ambiguous and wide—writing sonnets, solving math olympiad problems, debugging Python code. — Anshul Gupta, Forbes.com, 18 June 2026

Lunnemark, a math olympiad gold medalist in his native Sweden, worked briefly as a quant trader for Jane Street. — Bloomberg, Mercury News, 17 June 2026

Russians were barred from the last two Olympiads - the chess equivalent of soccer’s World Cup - following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. — CNN Money, 12 June 2026

Word History

Etymology

Middle English Olympias, from Latin Olympiad-, Olympias, from Greek, from Olympia, site of ancient Olympic Games

First Known Use

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for olympiad

• cephalad
• galahad
• ironclad
• libertad
• undergrad
• ad
• add
• bad
• brad
• cad
• clad
• dad

Kids Definition

olympiad

noun

olym·​pi·​ad ə-ˈlim-pē-ˌad 

ō-

often capitalized

1

: one of the four-year periods between Olympic Games

2

: a celebration of the modern Olympic Games

also : a competition similar or compared to the Olympic Games

the school's math olympiad