workout
Americannoun
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workouts
plural
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a trial or practice session in athletics, as in running, boxing, or football.
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a structured regime of physical exercise.
She goes to the gym for a workout twice a week.
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any trial or practice session.
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an act or instance of working something out.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of workout
First recorded in 1890–95; noun use of verb phrase work out
Explanation
A workout is an exercise session. If you hope to join your school's track team, you'd better be prepared for regular workouts. If you do yoga, lift weights, or run with your dog, you can call each of these activities a workout. When it's a verb, workout becomes two separate words: work out. So you can either say "I work out three days a week" or "I usually do three workouts a week." When this noun first appeared around the turn of the 20th century, it referred specifically to a practice boxing match.
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:
Endless workout videos making impossible promises filled her feeds.
From BBC ● Oct. 16, 2026
From pecs to decks, students in Nottingham are trying a new workout that turns a gym into a club night.
From BBC ● Oct. 13, 2026
Each workout was performed at 70% maximum capacity and consisted of 20 climbs, with 60 to 90 seconds of rest between climbs.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 8, 2026
If you have a regular 2 p.m. workout or meeting, the heart prepares to pump.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 5, 2026
Just me, a woman dressed in workout clothes reading a book, and a homeless man all the way down at the end.
From "The Boy in the Black Suit" by Jason Reynolds
Rather than focusing exclusively on long workouts or ambitious fitness goals, people may benefit from finding small opportunities to move throughout the day.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 12, 2026
For some, meeting a weekly exercise target means taking long walks or completing challenging workouts on Saturday and Sunday.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 12, 2026
Earlier this year a French naval officer went for a 4-mile run and, like millions of other runners around the world, uploaded his progress to Strava, the fitness app that plots workouts on a map.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 4, 2026
The difference, Roberts said, is how encouraged the manager was by Freeman’s workouts this week.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 3, 2026
He had been kicked off the team sophomore year for missing workouts.
From "Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team, And A Dream" by H.G. Bissinger
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
