tourney
Americannoun
verb (used without object)
noun
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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tourneysimple
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tourneyssimple
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have tourneyedperfect
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has tourneyedperfect
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am tourneyingprogressive
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are tourneyingprogressive
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is tourneyingprogressive
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have been tourneyingperfect progressive
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has been tourneyingperfect progressive
Past
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tourneyedsimple
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had tourneyedperfect
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was tourneyingprogressive
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were tourneyingprogressive
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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:
Near the start, when Dunk reluctantly accepts Egg as his squire, he set the terms of their relationship in a dark field outside the town where the tourney that births their legend takes place.
From Salon ● Feb. 23, 2026
If Cronin fails to make a strong tournament run for a second consecutive season — remember, they didn’t even make the tourney last year — next winter his job situation could begin to get murky.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 25, 2025
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
Coming into Saturday’s tourney game against Holy Cross, Clark, a fourth-year senior at Iowa, was averaging 5.2 makes and 13.8 attempts from deep.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 23, 2024
The Red Keep and the "Hand's tourney" were chafing him raw, Ned reflected as he climbed.
From "A Game of Thrones" by George R.R. Martin
In 2019 the governing body said it lost $2.8 million and those losses have multiplied the last few years since with increased spending after disparities between the men’s and women’s tourneys were pointed out.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 5, 2024
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
After missing two straight tourneys, Matta announced in June 2017 that he was stepping down, citing his health.
From Washington Times ● Apr. 3, 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
He was a solitary man who seldom left his own lands, but for wars and tourneys.
From "A Game of Thrones" by George R.R. Martin
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 Addison, Julia de Wolf Gibbs
Three days they tourneyed, but none could withstand Sir Guy's strong arm.
From Legends That Every Child Should Know; a Selection of the Great Legends of All Times for Young People by Mabie, Hamilton Wright
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 Aikin, Lucy
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
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 Pisan, Christin? de
How Sir Uwaine rode with the damosel of sixty year of age, and how he gat the prize at tourneying.
From Le Mort d'Arthur: Volume 1 by Malory, Thomas, Sir
There is nothing but tourneying, love-making, and enchantment.
From A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century by Beers, Henry A. (Henry Augustin)
Earl Douglas was in his gayest humour on this second day of the great tourneying.
From The Black Douglas by Richards, Frank
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 Richards, Frank
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 Malory, Thomas, Sir
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.
