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/oʊlˈɪmpiˌæd/ Listen

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

... was dans le movement gently intimated to his hearers that what may be called a robuster tone ruled the spirit of the age. Charity was going down, athletics were coming up. Another Olympiad had passed away. Wise indeed was Solon, who allowed four years for men to soften and to harden again. During the Olympiads it is to be presumed that men busied themselves with the slums that existed in those days, hearkened to the decadent poetry or fiction of that time, and ...

— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman

... desired my learned friend Mr. Maidwell to compute the difference of times betwixt Aristophanes and Livius Andronicus; and he assures me from the best chronologers that Plutus, the last of Aristophanes' plays, was represented at Athens in the year of the 97th Olympiad, which agrees with the year urbis conditae CCCLXIV. So that the difference of years betwixt Aristophanes and Andronicus is 150; from whence I have probably deduced that Livius Andronicus, who was a Grecian, had ...

— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden

... their honor in "the hollow way" near Athens. We may here remind our readers that the Greeks made use of the Olympic games to determine the date of each year. They took place every four years. The first was fixed 776 B. C. Each separate year was named the 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th of such or such an Olympiad.] ...

— Uarda • Georg Ebers