BILLIARDS

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does billiards mean? 

• BILLIARDS (noun)
  The noun BILLIARDS has 1 sense:

1. any of several games played on rectangular cloth-covered table (with cushioned edges) in which long tapering cue sticks are used to propel ivory (or composition) balls

  Familiarity information: BILLIARDS used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BILLIARDS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Any of several games played on rectangular cloth-covered table (with cushioned edges) in which long tapering cue sticks are used to propel ivory (or composition) balls

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Hypernyms ("billiards" is a kind of...):

table game (a game that is played on a table)

Meronyms (parts of "billiards"):

break (the opening shot that scatters the balls in billiards or pool)

cannon; carom (a shot in billiards in which the cue ball contacts one object ball and then the other)

masse; masse shot (a shot in billiards made by hitting the cue ball with the cue held nearly vertically; the cue ball spins around another ball before hitting the object ball)

miscue (a faulty shot in billiards; the cue tip slips off the cue ball)

Domain member category:

cannon (make a cannon)

break (make the opening shot that scatters the balls)

carom (make a carom)

 Context examples 

You never play billiards except with Thurston.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I asked Mrs. Fairfax if she had seen him;—yes: she believed he was playing billiards with Miss Ingram.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Some chalk marks over the waistcoat pocket were the only signs of billiards which I could see in one of them.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It's no harm, Jo. I have billiards at home, but it's no fun unless you have good players, so, as I'm fond of it, I come sometimes and have a game with Ned Moffat or some of the other fellows.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

I have quite as great an interest in being careful of his house as you can have; and as to such alterations as I was suggesting just now, such as moving a bookcase, or unlocking a door, or even as using the billiard-room for the space of a week without playing at billiards in it, you might just as well suppose he would object to our sitting more in this room, and less in the breakfast-room, than we did before he went away, or to my sister's pianoforte being moved from one side of the room to the other.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

He was nice in his eating, uncertain in his hours; fond of his child, though affecting to slight it; and idled away the mornings at billiards, which ought to have been devoted to business.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

Likewise they decree the things that are not shop and which may be talked about, and those things are the latest operas, latest novels, cards, billiards, cocktails, automobiles, horse shows, trout fishing, tuna-fishing, big-game shooting, yacht sailing, and so forth—and mark you, these are the things the idlers know.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Some of the gentlemen were gone to the stables: the younger ones, together with the younger ladies, were playing billiards in the billiard-room.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

You put chalk there when you play billiards, to steady the cue.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I only loved you all the more, and I worked hard to please you, and I gave up billiards and everything you didn't like, and waited and never complained, for I hoped you'd love me, though I'm not half good enough...

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)