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.

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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