This week I took an interest in various terms that are used in cue sports, as I’ve learned they’re called—sports where you use a stick to hit a ball that hits another ball. Carom sports or carom billiards is also sometimes used as the collective name, which I assumed was because the balls in the game carom off one another (but hold that thought).
I should start by saying that there are a lot of such games, and it’s not my intention to go deep into their differences. I’m here for the words, hope that’s ok.
For example, there’s the word billiards. In the game of English billiards, there are only three balls—two cue balls and a red ball. The word billiards is from the French word billard, which in turn is from bille “stick” plus the -ard diminutive ending. We’ve had the word in English since the late 1500s (“a kinde of play with balles vpon a table, called billiards,” 1598). Here’s a fun fact that you simply must find a way to use at your next social event: Shakespeare has Cleopatra playing billiards in the play Antony and Cleopatra. Did the Egyptians have a version of billiards? I wouldn’t be surprised. (Not that Shakespeare was any sort of model of historicity.)
Speaking of little sticks, our word for the, er, propelling device in these games is (the) cue. This apparently comes from the word queue, which is French for “tail” (somehow from Latin coda).
A game related to English billiards is pool. Or to be more precise, pool is a somewhat generic name for “any of various games of billiards played on an oblong table having 6 pockets with usually 15 object balls” (Merriam-Webster). If you go to a tavern in the US and want to play a cue sport, it will most probably be referred to as pool. Interestingly, the name pool is related to “pooling your resources” and a carpool; the common thread is “collective stakes”—in the game, the winner takes those collective stakes. Even more interestingly, the name pool might come from the French word poule (“chicken”). The OED speculates that this might reference “collocations or proverbs” from the 1600s. Douglas Harper’s speculation is more fun:
Perhaps the original notion is from jeu de la poule, supposedly a game in which people threw things at a chicken and the player who hit it, won it, which speaks volumes about life in the Middle Ages.
Another cue sport is snooker[1], which involves even more balls on the table (22) than pool. This variant originated among British troops in India in the 19th century. The “oft-told” story is that snooker was army slang for a cadet; the word was used about someone who was playing poorly. 
The OED lists the term snooker’s pool as another name for the game, so it’s reasonable to assume that snooker is a shortening of that, the way rugby is a shortening of Rugby football, say.
We also have the verb to snooker, meaning “to stymie; to cheat, hoodwink.” This probably comes from the game, in which to snooker [someone] is to leave the balls on the table in an unplayable position. The “cheat” sense seems to be an extension of this “stymie” sense. From “cadet” to “cheat,” that’s a pretty cool series of lateral steps for the word snooker.
Earlier I said that another name for cue sports is carom sports. The word carom is a verb to us, but it started as a noun. It could refer to a stroke in which the cue ball hits more than one ball (also called a cannon). But carom was also a name for the red ball in a billiards set; this sense comes from the Spanish word carambola. Portuguese has the word carambola that refers to a small fruit (ultimately from a Hindi word karmal). It’s tempting to assume that the name of the fruit was extended to refer to a red ball, but the OED somewhat sniffily comments “suggestions as to their identity have been made, but without any evidence.”
And finally, there’s the word English, as in to give the ball some English. This whole cue-sports investigation started when I ran across the following passage in the book Stuff Matters by Mark Miodownik:
During the nineteenth century the game got more technically sophisticated. First the cue sticks became tipped with leather and covered in chalk, to allow greater control of the ball by using spin. This technique was introduced to America by English sailors and is still referred to as putting “English” on the ball.
I tend to be leery about etymological assertions like this, but sure enough, Miodownik’s explanation is supported by the OED, which says “Perhaps so named because English players introduced the technique to the U.S.” However, they also have a cite from 1959 that states that this use of English was introduced to Americans by a person named English. (See previous observation about being leery.)
Douglas Harper has quite a different explanation for this sense of English. His story is that the word comes from the French word anglé (“angled”). The idea, I guess, is an issue of homophony: French billiards players put anglé on the ball, but people heard it as Anglais (“English”), and it ended up in English as English. Of the three explanations, I like this one best, though of course that doesn’t necessarily make it correct.
So that’s the roundup of cue-sports terms. If you like cue sports, perhaps you’ll enjoy this video of trick shots, featuring a cue, billiard balls, caroming, several carambolas, and a lot of English (no chickens):
Like this? Read all the Friday words.
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[1] When we lived in the UK, I was surprised to learn that the Brits pronounce the word snooker with a long U sound (like in boot), whereas I (an American from the west) pronounce snooker with a short U (like in book). I’m not sure why I found this particular difference so interesting compared to all the other pronunciation differences I encountered. Obviously, our spelling system is not a useful signal here. [^]