sb. pl. Also 6–7 balliards, 7 billards, billiars, billyards. The sing. billiard is used only in comb. (see 2). [a. F. billard, OF. also billart, the game; so named from billard ‘a cue,’ orig. ‘a stick with curved end, a hockey-stick,’ dim. of bille piece of wood, stick: see BILLET sb.2 and -ARD. In Eng. introduced only as the name of the game, and made pl. as in draughts, skittles, bowls, and other names of games.]
1. A game played with small solid ivory balls on a rectangular table having a smooth cloth-covered horizontal surface, the balls being driven about, according to the rules of the game, by means of long tapering sticks called cues.
1591. Spenser, M. Hubberd, 803. With all the thriftles games that may be found … With dice, with cards, with balliards.
1598. Florio, Trucco, a kinde of play with balles vpon at table, called billiards.
1606. Shaks., Ant. & Cl., II. v. 3. Let it alone, let’s to billards.
1611. Cotgr., Billiard, a short and thicke trunchion, or cudgell: hence … the sticke wherewith we touch the ball at billyards.
1712. Arbuthnot, John Bull (1755), 5. You sot, says she, you … spend your time at billiards, [etc.].
1873. Bennett & ‘Cavendish,’ Billiards, 2. Nothing is known about Billiards prior to the middle of the sixteenth century.
2. Comb. and Attrib., as billiard-ball, -club, -cue, -player, -room, -sharper, -sharping, -stick; billiard-cloth, fine green woollen cloth used for covering billiard-tables; billiard-mace, or † -mast, a rod furnished with a head or knob used to propel the ball in billiards; billiard-marker, a person who marks the ‘points’ made by each player, and keeps account of the progress of the game; also, a counting apparatus for registering results; so billiard-marking; billiard-table, the large table on which the game of billiards is played; usually 12 ft. by 6, covered with fine green cloth, surrounded by a cushioned ledge, and provided with six ‘pockets’ at the corners and sides for the reception of the balls.
a. 1637. B. Jonson, Celebr. Charis. And cheek … Smooth as is the *billiard-ball.
1871. Tyndall, Fragm. Sc. (ed. 6), II. xv. 408. Not all the sense of pain or pleasure in the world could lift a stone or move a billiard-ball.
1775. Sheridan, Rivals, II. i. Seven … waiters, and thirteen *billiard-markers.
1785. Cowper, Task, IV. 221. What was an hour-glass once Becomes a dice-box, and a *billiard-mast [1806 -mace] Well does the work of his destructive scythe.
1848. Thackeray, Van. Fair, viii. Tall doors with stags’ heads over them, leading to the *billiard-room and the library.
1865. Pall Mall Gaz., 11 Aug., 2/2. He meant to climb in the world to all that was pure and heroic by *billiard-sharping.
1817. Coleridge, Biog. Lit. (1817), 52. When … the *billiard-stick strikes the first or white ball.
1677. Evelyn, Mem., 10 Sept. The gallery is a pleasant, noble room: in the … middle, is a *billiard-table.
1711. Steele, Spect., No. 54, ¶ 4. Bowling-Greens, *Billiard-Tables, and such like Places.
1867. Baker, Nile Tribut., viii. 190. An immense tract of high grass, as level as a billiard-table.
