Billiards is a family of games played on a table, with a stick, known as a cue stick, being used to strike balls, moving them around the table. In certain contexts, "billiards" refers unambiguously to one or other of these games, such as English billiards or carambole billiards.
All billiard games are generally regarded to have evolved into indoor games from outdoor stick and ball games. The word billiard may have evolved from the French word 'billart' which means mace, the forerunner to the modern cue.
