英文词源
- billiards
- billiards: [16] Billiard comes from French billard, which is the name not only of the game, but also of the cue it is played with. And the cue is the clue to the word’s history, for it comes from French bille ‘tree trunk’, hence ‘long cylindrical bit of wood’. The import of the -ard suffix is not altogether clear, but another suffix used with bille was the diminutive -ette, from which English got billet ‘piece of wood’ [15] (not to be confused with billet ‘assignment to lodgings’; see BILL). Bille itself came from medieval Latin billa or billus, which may have been of Celtic origin.
=> billet - billiards (n.)
- 1590s, from French billiard, originally the word for the wooden cue stick, a diminutive from Old French bille "stick of wood," from Medieval Latin billia "tree, trunk," possibly from Gaulish (compare Irish bile "tree trunk").
