Meaning & use
a tracksuit
Last updated
Meanings
nouncountable
A set of loose, comfortable clothes worn for sport or relaxing, made of a soft jacket and matching trousers.
Grammar: Countable: you can say a tracksuit, two tracksuits, or the tracksuit.
Patterns
- wear a tracksuit
- a tracksuit and trainers
- in a tracksuit
He pulled on a tracksuit before his morning run.
She keeps a tracksuit in her locker at the gym.
The team all wore the same blue tracksuit to the stadium.
nouncountable
A single piece of this clothing, especially the top or the trousers, when bought or worn on its own.
Grammar: Often used with top or bottoms to be clear which piece you mean, as in a tracksuit top.
Patterns
- a tracksuit top
- tracksuit bottoms
- buy a new tracksuit
He only wore the tracksuit top because the evening was cool.
These tracksuit bottoms are too long for me.
She bought a cheap tracksuit for PE lessons.
Word forms
| plural | tracksuits |
|---|
Common combinations
- wear a tracksuit
- Students wear a tracksuit for physical education classes.
- a matching tracksuit
- He arrived in a matching tracksuit, top and bottoms the same shade.
- a tracksuit top
- She zipped up her tracksuit top as the wind picked up.
- a velour tracksuit
- Velour tracksuits were fashionable again last year.
- change into a tracksuit
- After work he changed into a tracksuit and went for a jog.
Synonyms and how they differ
- sweatsuit
- Very close in meaning; common in American English, while tracksuit is the usual word in British English.
- jogging suit
- An older, slightly dated term for the same outfit, now heard less often.
- kit
- In sport this means the whole set of clothes a player wears, which may include more than a tracksuit.
Word family
- tracksuit bottoms noun
- The trousers that go with a tracksuit top.
- tracksuited adjective
- Wearing a tracksuit, as in a tracksuited figure in the doorway.
Commonly confused: a tracksuit or sweatshirt? a tracksuit or tracksuit vs. track suit?
a tracksuit vs sweatshirt
A sweatshirt is only the top, a warm pullover; a tracksuit is normally the top and trousers together.
a tracksuit vs tracksuit vs. track suit
Both spellings appear, but tracksuit as one word is the standard modern form.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'tracksuit' correctly?
Choose one answer.
A tracksuit is an item of clothing you wear, so 'put on a tracksuit' fits. The other options treat it as a drink, a verb, or a quantity of liquid, which it is not.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “a tracksuit”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.