Word.ws English Dictionary

pentathlon

pentathlon noun: an ancient athletics discipline, featuring five events: stadion, wrestling, long jump, javelin and discus. Also the ellipsis of women's pentathlon.

Noun

pentathlon (plural pentathlons or pentathla)

  1. An ancient athletics discipline, featuring five events: stadion, wrestling, long jump, javelin and discus
    Synonyms:
    ancient pentathlon, Greek pentathlon, ancient Greek pentathlon

Also used as

pentathlon is also the ellipsis of women's pentathlon.

pentathlon is also the ellipsis of modern pentathlon.

Synonyms of pentathlon

  • ancient pentathlon
  • Greek pentathlon
  • ancient Greek pentathlon

Forms of pentathlon

pluralpentathlons
pluralpentathla

Origin of pentathlon

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

Words formed from pentathlon

Phrases with pentathlon

Questions about pentathlon

What does pentathlon mean?
Pentathlon means an ancient athletics discipline, featuring five events: stadion, wrestling, long jump, javelin and discus.
What part of speech is pentathlon?
Pentathlon is a noun.
What is the plural of pentathlon?
The plural of pentathlon is pentathlons.

Words near pentathlon in the dictionary

  1. pentathiophenes
  2. pentathla
  3. pentathlete
  4. pentathletes
  5. pentathloi
  6. pentathlon
  7. pentathlons
  8. pentathlos
  9. pentathlum
  10. pentating
  11. pentation

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pentathlon (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-pentathlon.wav.

Cite this entry: “pentathlon.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pentathlon. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.