team
Americannoun
-
teams
plural
-
a number of persons forming one of the sides in a game or contest.
a football team.
-
a number of persons associated in some joint action.
a team of advisers.
-
two or more horses, oxen, or other animals harnessed together to draw a vehicle, plow, or the like.
-
one or more draft animals together with the harness and vehicle drawn.
-
a family of young animals, especially ducks or pigs.
-
Obsolete. offspring or progeny; lineage or stock.
verb (used with object)
-
teams,
present (3rd person singular)
-
teamed,
past participle, past
-
teaming
present participle
-
to join together in a team.
-
Chiefly Northern U.S. Older Use. to convey or transport by means of a team; haul.
verb (used without object)
-
teams,
present (3rd person singular)
-
teamed,
past participle, past
-
teaming
present participle
adjective
noun
-
a group of people organized to work together
-
a group of players forming one of the sides in a sporting contest
-
two or more animals working together to pull a vehicle or agricultural implement
-
such animals and the vehicle
the coachman riding his team
-
dialect a flock, herd, or brood
-
obsolete ancestry
verb
-
to make or cause to make a team
he teamed George with Robert
-
(tr) to drag or transport in or by a team
-
(intr) to drive a team
Grammar
See collective noun.
Usage
What does team mean? A team is a group of people who work together in a joint action, as in Our Academic Decathlon team was made up of some of the smartest kids in our school. A team is also a group of people on one side of a contest or game, such as a soccer team or a trivia team. A team is also two or more draft animals, such as horses, harnessed together to pull something, like a plow or a cart. To team up is to form a group to work together, as in Miles and Lex teamed up to study for the big science test next month. Example: My team is working hard on these software solutions for streaming platforms.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
teamsimple
-
teamssimple
-
have teamedperfect
-
has teamedperfect
-
am teamingprogressive
-
are teamingprogressive
-
is teamingprogressive
-
have been teamingperfect progressive
-
has been teamingperfect progressive
Past
-
teamedsimple
-
had teamedperfect
-
was teamingprogressive
-
were teamingprogressive
-
had been teamingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of team
First recorded before 900; Middle English teme (noun), Old English tēam “child-bearing, brood, offspring, set of draft beasts”; cognate with Dutch toom “bridle, reins,” German Zaum, Old Norse taumr
Explanation
If you're part of a frisbee team, you're part of a group of people who cooperate to throw a plastic disc around. It's neat. Two or more of people working together on a single task can be called a team, whether that's an informal team or a professional one. The two horses that pull your carriage are a team, and the guys you play soccer with on Saturday mornings are also a team. Team can also be a verb, meaning "to join forces." If you want to beautify your town, team up with local people to paint a mural for the community.
Vocabulary lists containing team
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Her team explained that they had begun testing ads on OpenAI.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 15, 2026
He is also the youngest person to play in an unofficial game with United’s first team.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 15, 2026
Letby was moved on to administrative duties in July 2016 after consultants expressed concerns about her to the hospital's executive team.
From BBC ● Sep. 15, 2026
For the team at Magnetar, CoreWeave was the same logic applied to the AI production layer.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 15, 2026
Somebody has gone through the ice and they found her team wandering alone.
From "Woodsong" by Gary Paulsen
The other teams are pretty much locked down, although it's still unknown whether Fernando Alonso is going to continue in F1 next year.
From BBC ● Sep. 15, 2026
Dave Winfield, 74, is a former Major League Baseball right fielder who played for six teams and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2001.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 15, 2026
From 2015 to 2025, the 4D Nucleome program brought together interdisciplinary research teams from across the United States to investigate how the genome's spatial arrangement influences biological processes.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 15, 2026
Those deals violated the league salary cap, which limits how much teams can pay players.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 14, 2026
It took a while for thirty teams and their chaperones to make it through the screening process, so while the team waited, Juliette gave them a brief tour of the ground floor.
From "City Spies" by James Ponti
Spain’s Lamine Yamal and Pau Cubarsí teamed to win a World Cup title while still in their teens.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 15, 2026
The 80-year-old and his 14-year-old counterpart teamed up two years ago and have not looked back since.
From BBC ● Sep. 9, 2026
Reuters had reported in July that the consortium had teamed up and come up with an acquisition offer of $60.50 a share, which would have valued PayPal at more than $53 billion.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 28, 2026
Nvidia recently teamed up with six Wall Street firms on a $500 billion AI-financing plan to backstop lending to customers who need its chips.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 24, 2026
Jayme and Taylor teamed up and won the state history day contest in 2009, and took ninth place in nationals for a project on Joe Hill, a labor activist.
From "A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age" by Matt Richtel
Google Cloud and Accenture are teaming up on the latest bet that forward-deployed engineers are key to unlocking business value from generative AI, the WSJ Leadership Institute’s Isabelle Bousquette reports.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 8, 2026
The chip maker and online retailer are teaming up to build data-center infrastructure, including chips and optical networking products.
From Barron's ● Sep. 8, 2026
In these situations, two ships are essentially teaming up to move crude out of the Persian Gulf.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 31, 2026
Cynics will argue Williams and Alcaraz are only teaming up for the publicity - for themselves, the US Open and the global sportswear brand which they both promote.
From BBC ● Aug. 22, 2026
This teaming up with the Career wolf pack to hunt down the rest of us.
From "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
