billiards · noun — A two-player cue sport played with two cue balls and one red ball, on a snooker sized table.
Definition from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
billiards is pronounced /ˈbɪlɪədz/.
Etymology
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”).
noun
- A two-player cue sport played with two cue balls and one red ball, on a snooker sized table.e.g.“He was playing billiards in the casino.”
- Any of various games played on a tabletop, usually with several balls, one or more of which is hit by a cue.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.
- billiard 73% match — A shot in billiards or snooker in which the cue ball strikes two other balls; a carom. vs billiards →
- billiardist 67% match — A player of billiards. vs billiards →
- bowlliards 67% match — A pool game that borrows aspects of tenpin bowling. vs billiards →
- boccette 62% match — An Italian billiards-like ball sport. vs billiards →
- cuestick 62% match — cue; the stick used to propel the ball in snooker, billiards, etc. vs billiards →
- carpetball 60% match — A game, similar to pool and played with pool balls, played in a long, high-walled table. Each player gets five balls to arrange however they want at their end of the table, and they take turns trying to knock each other's balls into troughs at each end of the table. The player who knocks down all five of the other player's balls first is the winner. vs billiards →
- billard 59% match — A coalfish, especially a young one. vs billiards →
- billiardth 59% match — The ordinal form of the number one billiard. vs billiards →