billiards

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A game played on a cloth-covered table in which players use long sticks to hit balls into one another or into pockets.

   They spent the evening playing billiards at the club.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Billiards comes from French billard, literally “little tree trunk,” from bille “stick of wood.” It first named the cue and was soon transferred to the game itself; the French word ultimately traces through medieval Latin billa or billus “branch, trunk,” probably to a Celtic root.

From French billard, originally referring to the wooden cue stick, diminutive of Old French bille (“log, tree trunk”), from Vulgar Latin *bilia, probably of Gaulish origin (compare Old Irish bile (“large tree, tree trunk”)), from Proto-Celtic *belyos (“tree”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰolh₃yos (“leaf”), from *bʰleh₃- (“blossom, flower”).

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External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary