🏅 Olympic Games 📆 Four-year period

Olympiad

1 7.4

A four-year period used to count time between Olympic Games

noun
/oʊˈlɪm.pi.æd/

: olimpiada

Now, when we think of the term Greek Olympiad, we hearken back to ancient traditions.
two Olympiads

Examples

Lochte's five medals in one Olympic Games tied a Gator record for the most won in a single Olympiad.

Blog text (10)
The Olympiad was not particularly a sporting event, but a religious and cultural festival, the only overlap with the modern conception being athletics.

Academic text (1994)
Because after the Olympiad, a year later, I came to the United States on a scholarship.
We welcome all the Chess Olympiad teams flying with us today.

Queen of Katwe (2016)
This year the debate lasted only four hours, a short period by Olympiad standards.

Academic text (1993)
In the case of Greece, their major era, the Olympiad, was set at the first Olympic games in 776 BC.

Blog text (19)
This statue celebrated a victory in the 73rd Olympiad and thus in the 480s BCE; we even know the name of the sculptor, Glaukias of Aigina.

Academic text (2014)
The first official Olympiad was declared in 776 BC, marking the beginning of the ancient Greek Games.
During each Olympiad, the Greeks used the four-year cycle to measure time and hold athletic competitions.
Historians often refer to the Olympiad as a significant period for understanding ancient Greek culture and events.

Surface Forms

Olympiad singular

Olympiads plural

Morphology

Olympiad = Olympic (semi-transparent) = olympi + iad

The connection to 'Olympic' is obvious, but the specialized historical sense 'a period of four years' is lexicalized and not transparently predictable from the components for many learners.

Etymology

Olympiad originally meant the time between the games at Olympia, because the festival happened once every four years. Ancient Greeks even used an 'Olympiad' to count years, so today Olympiad can also mean a 'four-year period'.