OLYMPIAD • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Olympiad

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noun

Olympiad n.

(Greek Antiq.) A period of four years, by which the ancient Greeks reckoned time, being the interval from one celebration of the Olympic games to another, beginning with the victory of Coroebus in the foot race, which took place in the year 776 b. c.; as, the era of the olympiads.

The quadrennial celebration of the modern Olympic games; as, the first Olympiad (1906). See Olympics.

Synonyms: Olympic games, Olympics.

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Etymology of 'Olympiad'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Olympiad" Quotes from Famous Books

... Passover was to the Jewish nation, sacred, venerable, blending divine worship and human joy. These games were a chronology, a constitution, and a church to the Pan-Hellenic race. All epochs were reckoned from them; as events occurring in such or such an Olympiad. The first Olympiad was seven hundred and seventy-six years before Christ; and a large part of our present knowledge of ancient chronology depends on these festivals. They bound Greece together as by ...

— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... here give a suspected passage, which may be rendered thus: "The first of Olympiad 93, celebrated as the year in which the newly-added two-horse race was won by Evagorias the Eleian, and the stadion (200 yards foot-race) by the Cyrenaean Eubotas, when Evarchippus was ephor at Sparta and Euctemon archon at Athens." But Ol. 93, to which these ...

— Hellenica • Xenophon

Words linked to "Olympiad" : Winter Olympics, athletic competition, athletic contest, Olympics, athletics, Winter Olympic Games, time period, period