tourney
Americannoun
-
tourneys
plural
verb (used without object)
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tourneys,
present (3rd person singular)
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tourneyed,
past participle, past
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tourneying
present participle
noun
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
tourneysimple
-
tourneyssimple
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have tourneyedperfect
-
has tourneyedperfect
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am tourneyingprogressive
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are tourneyingprogressive
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is tourneyingprogressive
-
have been tourneyingperfect progressive
-
has been tourneyingperfect progressive
Past
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tourneyedsimple
-
had tourneyedperfect
-
was tourneyingprogressive
-
were tourneyingprogressive
-
had been tourneyingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of tourney
1300–50; (v.) Middle English tourneyen < Old French torneier < Vulgar Latin *tornidiāre to wheel, keep turning; (noun) Middle English tourneie < Old French tournei, derivative of tourneier. See turn
Explanation
A tourney is a tournament: a sporting event that consists of a series of games that result in a champion. Tourney is an informal word for a tournament. A tourney is a series of games with a bunch of different teams or individuals. Tennis events like Wimbledon are tourneys. The playoffs for the NBA, NFL, and NHL are tourneys. In a tourney, you have to beat more than one team to become the champion or overall winner, and there are different rounds in which you face different opponents. A single sporting event — like a boxing match — is not a tourney.
Vocabulary lists containing tourney
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
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Tolkien Reading Day, List 11
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The Ruins of Gorlan
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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:
They will face De La Salle on Thursday at 4 p.m. at El Dorado in the tourney final.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 2, 2026
However, this tourney attracts lords and knights from great houses throughout Westeros, including a couple whose families figure prominently in “Game of Thrones.”
From Salon ● Jan. 17, 2026
Kang Ae-sim and Yang Dong-geun portray an elderly woman and her failson who enter the tourney to erase his mountainous debt.
From Salon ● Dec. 26, 2024
Eneasi Piuleini had 23 points and earned tourney MVP honors.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 23, 2024
It was the year of false spring, and he was eighteen again, down from the Eyrie to the tourney at Harrenhal.
From "A Game of Thrones" by George R.R. Martin
And there’s all-time chess great Magnus Carlsen, who netted $3.25 million for sponsorships during international chess tourneys like the FTX Crypto Cup.
From Slate ● Oct. 18, 2023
How far they’ll climb remains to be seen, but they’re just one win away from reaching the Big Ten title game for the sixth time in 10 tourneys.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 11, 2022
"I believe in these guys. I really do," said Chris Beard, who led the Red Raiders in five Big 12 tourneys but will be there with Texas for the first time.
From Fox News ● Mar. 8, 2022
Even in tourneys where knights display unadulterated mounted skills by putting lances through rings and other challenges, there’s room for audience participation.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 24, 2021
Fabulous eaters arrived from everywhere to take part in the irrational tourneys of capacity and resistance that were organized in the house of Petra Cotes.
From "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
And the devise of a castle of cloth of gold, set with pomegranates about the battlements, with shields of knights hanging therefrom; and six knights in rich harness tourneyed.
From Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth by Lucy Aikin
In the days of Henry VIII. a chronicler tells of a jouster who "tourneyed in harneyse all of gilt from the head piece to the sabattons."
From Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages A Description of Mediaeval Workmanship in Several of the Departments of Applied Art, Together with Some Account of Special Artisans in the Early Renaissance by Julia de Wolf Gibbs Addison
Thus they tourneyed together, one with an axe and the other with a sword, a long season, and no man to let them.
From Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) by Jean Froissart; Thomas Malory; Raphael Holinshed
Glorious has the tourney been Where for me has fought the Queen; But a disgrace for me it were If I tourneyed not for her.
From Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres by Henry Adams
Then the general tourney began, and, in double file, and much increased in numbers, our company sallied forth, and, as it behoved them, tourneyed bravely.
From The Book of the Duke of True Lovers by Christin? de Pisan
After four years of such instruction, his father's death called him home to inherit his property, and he spent the three years that followed by tourneying in the noviciate of knighthood.
From Studies in Medi?val Life and Literature by Edward Tompkins McLaughlin
When the Cid began to war upon the town, and sent parties against it twice and thrice a day, for the Cid was alway upon the alert, there was fighting and tourneying every day.
From Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) by Various
The Lord James Douglas, second son of the Gross One, had won the single tourneying by unhorsing all his opponents without even breaking a lance.
From The Black Douglas by Frank Richards
There were great jousts and tourneying at that time in Cornwall, and Sir Tristram was most praised of all the knights.
From Stories of King Arthur and His Knights Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" by U. Waldo Cutler
Then was there great jousts and great tourneying, and many lords and ladies were at that feast, and Sir Tristram was most praised of all other.
From Le Mort d'Arthur: Volume 1 by Sir Thomas Malory
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.
