Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A game of chance, resembling a lottery, in which the contestants put staked money into a common fund that is later paid to the winner.
  • noun A fund containing all the money bet in a game of chance or on the outcome of an event.
  • noun A supply, as of vehicles or workers, available for use by a group.
  • noun A group of journalists who cover an event and then by agreement share their reports with participating news media.
  • noun A mutual fund established by a group of stockholders for speculating in or manipulating prices of securities.
  • noun The persons or parties participating in such a fund.
  • noun A grouping of assets, such as mortgages, that serves as a basis for the issuing of securities.
  • noun An agreement between competing business concerns to establish controls over production, market, and prices for common profit.
  • noun Any of several games played on a six-pocket billiards table usually with 15 object balls and a cue ball.
  • intransitive verb To put into a pool, as for common use.
  • intransitive verb To join or form a pool.
  • noun A small body of still water.
  • noun An accumulation of standing liquid; a puddle.
  • noun A deep or still place in a stream.
  • noun A swimming pool.
  • noun An underground accumulation of petroleum or gas in porous sedimentary rock.
  • intransitive verb To form pools or a pool.
  • intransitive verb To accumulate in a body part.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In quarrying, to make a hole in (rock) for inserting a wedge; also, to undermine (coal) to cause (it) to fall.
  • To form pools, as water; stagnate.
  • noun The stakes in certain games of cards, billiards, etc.
  • noun A game played on a billiard-table with six pockets by two or more persons.
  • noun In horse-racing, ball-games, etc., the combination of a number of persons, each staking a sum of money on the success of a horse in a race, a contestant in a game, etc., the money to be divided among the successful betters according to the amount put in by each; also, the money so staked.
  • noun In rifle-shooting, firing for prizes on the principle that every competitor pays a certain sum for every shot, and the proceeds after a certain deduction are divided among the successful competitors.
  • noun A set of players, as at the game of quadrille or comet; also, one of the counters used in such games.
  • noun A combination intended by concert of action to make or control changes in market rates.
  • noun A Middle English form of pole.
  • noun A small body of standing water; a small pond.
  • noun A part of a small stream where the bed suddenly deepens and broadens, forming a relatively still, deep, and wide stretch of water.
  • noun In Pennsylvania, on some of the rivers of the mining regions, a stretch of water lying between two river-dams.
  • noun Hence— The country adjacent to such pools.
  • noun A measure of work in slating, or covering houses with slate, equal to 168 square feet in all, or to 84 square feet on each side of the roof.
  • noun In decorative art, a rounded depression, small and short in comparison with its width. Compare fluting.
  • To put into one common fund or stock for the purpose of dividing or redistributing in certain proportions; make into a common fund: as, to pool interests.
  • To form a pool; make common cause in some matter.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A small and rather deep collection of (usually) fresh water, as one supplied by a spring, or occurring in the course of a stream; a reservoir for water.
  • noun A small body of standing or stagnant water; a puddle.
  • intransitive verb To combine or contribute with others, as for a commercial, speculative, or gambling transaction.
  • transitive verb To put together; to contribute to a common fund, on the basis of a mutual division of profits or losses; to make a common interest of.
  • noun The stake played for in certain games of cards, billiards, etc.; an aggregated stake to which each player has contributed a snare; also, the receptacle for the stakes.
  • noun A game at billiards, in which each of the players stakes a certain sum, the winner taking the whole; also, in public billiard rooms, a game in which the loser pays the entrance fee for all who engage in the game; a game of skill in pocketing the balls on a pool table.
  • noun In rifle shooting, a contest in which each competitor pays a certain sum for every shot he makes, the net proceeds being divided among the winners.
  • noun Any gambling or commercial venture in which several persons join.
  • noun A combination of persons contributing money to be used for the purpose of increasing or depressing the market price of stocks, grain, or other commodities; also, the aggregate of the sums so contributed
  • noun (Railroads) A mutual arrangement between competing lines, by which the receipts of all are aggregated, and then distributed pro rata according to agreement.
  • noun (Law) An aggregation of properties or rights, belonging to different people in a community, in a common fund, to be charged with common liabilities.
  • noun a variety of the game of billiards in which small wooden pins are set up to be knocked down by the balls.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French poule, hen, stakes, booty, from Old French, hen, young chicken, from Latin pullus, young of an animal; see pau- in Indo-European roots.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English pōl.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English pool, pole, pol, from Old English pōl ("pool"), from Proto-Germanic *pōlaz (“pool, pond”), from Proto-Indo-European *bale- (“bog, marsh”). Cognate with Scots puil ("pool"), Saterland Frisian Pol ("pool"), West Frisian poel ("pool"), Dutch poel ("pool"), Low German Pohl, Pul ("pool"), German Pfuhl ("quagmire, mudhole"), Danish pøl ("puddle"), Swedish pöl ("puddle, pool"), Icelandic pollur ("puddle"), Lithuanian bala ("bog, marsh, swamp, pool"), Latvian bala ("a muddly, treeless depression"), Russian болото (boloto, "swamp, bog, marsh").

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

French poule ("collective stakes in a game") (The OED suggests that this may be a transferred use of poule ("hen"), but the derivation is uncertain.)

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Examples

  • zfs receive -v -u -d -F portable/$pool done then I export and store the portable pool somewhere else.

    OpenSolaris Forums: Message List - root 2010

  • The environment would no longer foster those wordsmiths who might otherwise have been more visibly adding words to the English word pool, or magically new-minting old ones.

    The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

  • The environment would no longer foster those wordsmiths who might otherwise have been more visibly adding words to the English word pool, or magically new-minting old ones.

    The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

  • Actually the pool is at the back of the house and separates the solarium from the master bedroom.

    The Peninsula Residence by Bercy Chen Studio 2009

  • Getting into a pool is a trade off for the individual.

    Health Insurance Idea, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009

  • On the way home, though, we ran into Sammy & kidlings, and the Elder Kidling has swim classes at the Mardyke on Mondays, so at the very least I can join them for a while and see if the pool is actually worth paying the gym fee for.

    holiday? what’s a holiday? 2008

  • If a PC dumbfounds you by thinking his way out of certain death or manipulating a situation the way a pianist manipulates a keyboard, another die for the pool is a concrete way to acknowledge the feat.

    D&D 4e – A Board Game? « Geek Related 2008

  • Unfortunately, the shallowest part of the pool is about 6 inches over my head, so the process of getting the girls into the pool was slow and tedious.

    Jenni's life at the moment Jenni's life at the moment 2008

  • Unfortunately, the shallowest part of the pool is about 6 inches over my head, so the process of getting the girls into the pool was slow and tedious.

    Archive 2008-11-01 Jenni's life at the moment 2008

  • Meanwhile, other White House officials were pulling in a small group of reporters in sort of what they call a pool situation to witness this moment in history, and then tell the rest of the press about it.

    CNN Transcript Jan 21, 2009 2009

Comments

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  • Loop in reverse.

    November 3, 2007