Billiards is a table game: cloth on a heavy table, coloured balls, and a cue. Players strike the balls so they hit each other and, in the pocket games, fall into nets at the corners and sides. The word looks plural. Many speakers still treat the game as singular: “Billiards is his favourite game,” the same pattern as draughts or athletics. As with billiard, the tidy school picture — pockets, a cue, green cloth — covers several real games. Pool, snooker, and games with no pockets at all all live in this family, and different countries pick different names. In Taiwan you walk into a 撞球場, not a “billiards hall,” but an English speaker pointing at that room might still say billiards or pool. Though actually, if someone in Britain invites you to “play billiards,” they may mean the older three-ball game, not the pool table you are picturing; it is fair to ask which game they mean. The word came from French billard, which first named the wooden cue — a little stick — not the table.