Gymnast

How to spell gymnast

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce gymnast

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does gymnast mean?

1. nounA person trained in physical exercises and acrobatic feats, especially on apparatus such as bars, beams, or rings.

Gymnast in a sentence

• The young gymnast practised her routine on the balance beam every morning.

• As a competitive gymnast, he trained for six hours a day before the championships.

Where does gymnast come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek gymnastes, meaning 'a trainer of athletes', which was built on the verb gymnazein, 'to train or exercise'. That verb in turn came from gymnos, the Greek word for 'naked', because athletes in ancient Greece habitually trained and competed without clothing, and the very place they did it was called the gymnasion, the ancestor of our modern 'gymnasium'. The route into English ran through Latin gymnasticus and then French before settling in English around the late 1500s. The spelling trap lives in that classical opening: the unexpected 'gym' spelled with a 'y' rather than an 'i', a relic of the Greek upsilon that scribes rendered as 'y'. Knowing that the 'gym' in 'gymnast' is literally the 'gym' you exercise in helps fix both spellings at once.

How the word is built

• gymn- (from Greek gymnos: naked)
• -ast (agent suffix, one who does)