sports

Formssportses, sportsing, sportsed

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of sport.

   She competes in three different sports each year.

   Winter sports like skiing draw large crowds every season.

   Note

   The ordinary count plural, used when separate games are named one by one: three sports, winter sports. Because sport can also name a person, the same plural covers people too, as in they were good sports about losing. Keep it apart from the collective mass noun, which treats athletics as one field and cannot be counted.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   Physical activity and competitive games engaged in for exercise or recreation, considered collectively as a whole.

   Sports plays a central role in school life across the country.

   She has always loved sports far more than sitting indoors.

   Similarsport

   Note

   A plural-looking word that behaves as a mass noun. It names athletics as a single field, so it can take a singular verb (sports plays a central role) and it never takes a number. In this use it means the same as uncountable sport, as in a love of sport. Counting belongs to the ordinary plural.

3. 3
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of sport.

   The mascot sports an oversized costume at every home game.

   He sports a confident grin whenever the cameras turn his way.

   Note

   Agreement with he, she or it in the present: the mascot sports a costume, but the players sport one. Much everyday use is transitive and means "display, have as a notable feature": she sports a beard, he sports a grin. Don't mistake it for the jokey verb "to sports", which keeps the -s throughout and so has its own third-person form, sportses.

4. 4
   verbintransitive

   To take part in sports, used jokingly by a speaker uninterested in the activity to wave off its specifics.

   She rolled her eyes and said she would sports later with her brother.

   I don't follow any of it, but sure, let's sports this weekend.

   Note

   A deliberately clumsy verb built on the plural noun, so its endings pile on top of the -s: sportses, sportsing, sportsed. The joke lies in refusing to name the game. Sean Ahern's What It Tastes Like to Be Sane (2011) plays it straight-faced with "And so they sportsed." Broadcasting in 1981 worried that consumers were getting "over-sportsed."

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