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team sport

team sport

17 2.6
A sport where players work together in teams to play against another team
  • noun
  • /tim spɔrt/
translation icon : deporte de equipo
  • Many children enjoy participating in a team sport like soccer, which fosters teamwork and friendship.
  • participating in team sports
  • team sports, like basketball
  • team sports: football

I was not good at team sports or ball sports.

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Examples

  • And this is a team sport.

  • The majority of students in this project were involved in interactive team sports such as basketball and soccer.

    Academic text (1995)
  • And so, you know, it's a team sport and you have to have people on your team that have the same goals you do.

  • I was not good at team sports or ball sports.

  • So you know, he likes team sports, not individual sports.

  • Formula 1 is a team sport.

  • How often do you participate in team sports during the week?

    Academic text (2015)
  • Outside of school, children voluntarily play team sports, hopefully influenced by positive school experiences.

    Academic text (2008)
  • For example, children who use wheelchairs are often excluded from team sports such as basketball and soccer.

    Academic text (1996)
  • The teamwork, and the trust, and the sacrifice those are all true for every single team sport.

How Team-Oriented

team sport
17 2.6
doubles
1 2.7
singles
4 2.5

Surface Forms

team sport singular
team sports plural

Morphology

team + sport

The meaning 'a sport played by teams' is directly and compositionally derived from 'team' (a group of people) + 'sport' (organized physical activity), following a regular noun–noun compound pattern in English. This logic is cross-linguistically common (e.g., Spanish 'deporte de equipo', French 'sport d'équipe'), so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will readily understand the phrase.

Etymology

The compound noun team sport comes from two simple words: team, meaning a 'group of players', and sport, meaning a 'game'. The image of many players working together against another group explains why it means 'a sport played by teams'.