billiards

UK/ˈbɪlɪədz/US/ˈbɪl.jɚdz/

nounC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,730 of 15,258leans written

Billiards is a cue game played with a small number of balls. Play billiards, a billiards table, a game of billiards.

English billiards uses three balls and no pockets to sink in the American sense, which makes it quite different from pool or snooker. The word takes a singular verb: billiards is a slow game. It gave its name to the whole family of cue sports.

Definitions of billiards

1nounbilliardsA cue game played with a small number of balls.C1
“The old men played billiards in the back room of the club every Friday.”

billiards is a game.

Where it comes from

French billard first meant the cue stick, from bille, a log or tree trunk, from a Celtic root.

French
billard
English, today
billiards

Built from

*bʰleh₃- · Proto-Indo-European — blossom, flower

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

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Sports & Games Played

Practise this word

billiards in the wild

Cue sports, a category of stick sports, may collectively be referred to as billiards, though this term has more specific connotations in some English dialects.
Cue sports
Bar billiards is a form of billiards which involves scoring points by potting balls in holes on the playing surface of the table rather than in pockets.
Bar billiards
Bar billiards developed from the French/Belgian game billard russe, of Russian origin.
Bar billiards
English billiards, called simply billiards in the UK and in many former British colonies, is a cue sport that combines the aspects of carom billiards and pool.
English billiards
Geet Siriram Sethi of India is a professional player of English billiards who dominated the sport throughout much of the 1990s.
Geet Sethi

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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