Backgammon is a board game of moving counters by the throw of dice. Play backgammon, a backgammon board, lose at backgammon.
It is one of the oldest games still played, with ancestors five thousand years old, and it mixes luck and judgement in a way chess does not — the dice decide what you may do and skill decides what you should. The doubling cube turns it into a betting game.
1nounbackgammonA board game of moving counters by the throw of dice.
“The old men sat outside the café, rolling dice and playing backgammon all afternoon.”
backgammon is a game.
Back plus the old English word gamen, a game, recorded from the seventeenth century — pieces can be sent back.
Old English
gamen — amusement, game
Middle English
gamen
English, today
backgammon
Probably from back + Middle English gamen, from Old English gamen (“amusement, game”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA