Marbles is the old game played with small glass balls flicked along the ground. Play marbles, a bag of marbles, win his marbles.
The usual form is to knock an opponent's marble out of a ring, and playing for keeps means the winner keeps what they knock out — which is where the phrase comes from. Named types include the shooter, the taw and the alley. Lose your marbles means to lose your mind. Note that the game is far older than glass marbles, which arrived only in the nineteenth century.
1nounmarblesA game played with small glass balls flicked along the ground.
“The boys knelt in the playground playing marbles at break time.”
marbles is a children's game.
Ancient Greek
μάρμαρος
Latin
marmor
Old French
marbre
Middle English
marble
English
marble
English, today
marbles
Built from
marble Middle English marble, marbre; from Anglo-Norman - and Old French marbre, from Latin marmor, from Ancient Greek μάρμαρος, perhaps related to μαρμάρεος (“gleaming”). The forms from French marma, which had previously been borrowed from Latin.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA