Meaning & use
body building
Last updated
Meaning
noununcountable
The activity of training with weights to make the muscles larger and stronger, often for competition.
Grammar: Uncountable: talk about body building in general, not 'a body building' or 'body buildings'.
Patterns
- do body building
- compete in body building
- body building competition
He started body building at sixteen and now trains six days a week.
She won a national body building competition last year.
Body building requires careful attention to diet as well as training.
Common combinations
- competitive body building
- Competitive body building demands years of strict training.
- a body building competition
- He entered his first body building competition at twenty.
- body building training
- Her body building training starts at five in the morning.
- take up body building
- He took up body building to get stronger for rugby.
Synonyms and how they differ
- weight training
- Weight training is any training with weights; body building is specifically aimed at building muscle size and shape.
- bodybuilding
- Same meaning, but written as one word; this is the more standard spelling.
Word family
- bodybuilder noun
- A person who does body building.
- bodybuild verb
- To train with weights to build muscle; less common than the noun.
Commonly confused: body building or bodybuilding?
body building vs bodybuilding
The one-word form is the usual spelling; 'body building' with a space is also correct but less common.
Practice
He has been doing body building ______ five years.
Choose one answer.
'For' is used with a length of time (five years). 'Since' would need a starting point, e.g. 'since 2019'. 'From' and 'during' do not fit this pattern.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “body building”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.