General term for cue sports, including pocket billiards (pool) and carom billiards.
On weekends I go play pool with friends.
He is very good at billiards.
serial collisions; pileup
Metaphorical use likening a chain-reaction crash to billiard balls hitting each other; often used in traffic accident reports.
A multiple-vehicle pileup occurred on the expressway.
玉突き is an older, more colloquial Japanese term for billiards, while ビリヤード is the modern loanword commonly used today.
billiard table; pool table
Standard kanji spelling; used in news and general writing.
Abbreviated kanji form; search-only.
Alternate kanji using 撞く (to strike); less common than 玉突き.
Uses 球 (ball) instead of 玉; rare variant.
Compound of 玉 (ball) and 突き (striking), from the verb 突く (to strike). The metaphorical sense for traffic accidents comes from the image of balls colliding in sequence.