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by Liz Walter

From the Olympic Games through to ‘biggest cabbage’ at the local gardening show, most of us take part in competitions of some sort or another. Today’s post looks at the language we use to talk about them.

Another general word for a competition is contest. People who take part in competitions and contests are competitors and contestants. A tournament is a sports or chess competition in which teams or individuals play against each other until only one is left:

My school is holding a talent contest for pupils.

All competitors must be over 16.

Contestants compete to win cash prizes.

They organized a tennis tournament for employees and their families.

If you decide to take part in a competition, you enter it and compete in it. You could also enter something you have made or produced in a competition:

Have you entered the chess tournament?

She was the first woman to compete in a marathon.

She entered some of her poems in a competition.

The person or team most people expect to win is known as the favourite (UK) / favorite (US). If they are definitely expected to win, we often use the collocation hot. On the other hand, the person or team thought likely to lose is the underdog:

He’s hot favourite to win the Booker Prize for fiction.

In this contest, we are definitely the underdogs.

Most competitions have someone who makes sure they are fair. In sports such as football and basketball, this is a referee, while cricket, tennis and baseball have umpires. Non-sporting competitions usually have judges. A panel of judges is a group of people who judge the same competition:

The referee warned both players about their behaviour.

The umpire called the runner out at second base.

He was one of the judges in the Leeds Piano Competition.

We have appointed a distinguished panel of judges for this year’s journalism award.

Finally, the number of points, goals, etc. that someone has in a competition is their score, and someone who records this keeps score. Sometimes the score is displayed on a scoreboard:

At the end of the competition, the score was blue team 105 to red team 97.

We competed to name animals beginning with different letters and Dad kept score.

The basketball court has a huge electronic scoreboard.

If you found this post useful, do look out for my next one, which focuses on vocabulary connected with winning and losing competitions.