Cue sports are a wide variety of games of skill played with a cue, which is used to strike billiard balls and thereby cause them to move around a cloth-covered table bounded by elastic bumpers known as cushions. Cue sports are also collectively referred to as billiards, though this term has more specific connotations in some varieties of English.
Bocce, sometimes anglicized as bocce ball, bocci, or boccie, is a ball sport belonging to the boules family. Developed into its present form in Italy, it is closely related to British bowls and French pétanque, with a common ancestry from ancient games played in the Roman Empire. Bocce is played around Western, Southern, and Southeastern Europe, as well as in overseas areas with historical Italian immigrant population, including Australia, North America, and South America, principally Argentina and the southern Brazilian states of Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina. Initially it was only played by the Italian immigrants, the game has slowly become more popular among their descendants and more people around the world.
Squash, sometimes called squash rackets, is a racket-and-ball sport played by two or four players in a four-walled court with a small, hollow, rubber ball. The players alternate in striking the ball with their rackets onto the playable surfaces of the four walls of the court. The objective of the game is to hit the ball in such a way that the opponent is not able to play a valid return. There are about 20 million people who play squash regularly world-wide in over 185 countries. The governing body of squash, the World Squash Federation (WSF), is recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and the sport is included in the Olympic Games, after a number of applications. Squash has been added for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. The Professional Squash Association (PSA) organizes the pro tour.
Boules, or jeu de boules, is a collective name for a wide range of games similar to bowls and bocce in which the objective is to throw or roll heavy balls as closely as possible to a small target ball, called the jack. 'Boules' itself is a French loanword that usually refers to the game especially played in France.
A football is a ball inflated with air that is used to play one of the various sports known as football. In these games, with some exceptions, goals or points are scored only when the ball enters one of two designated goal-scoring areas; football games involve the two teams each trying to move the ball in opposite directions along the field of play.
A ball is a spherical round object with various uses.
A golf ball is a special ball designed to be used in the game of golf.
La soule, later choule, is a traditional team sport that originated in Normandy and Picardy. The ball, called a soule, could be solid or hollow and made of either wood or leather. Leather balls would be filled with hay, bran, horse hair or moss. Sometimes the balls had woolen pompons.
Medieval football is a modern term used for a wide variety of the localised informal football games which were invented and played in England during the Middle Ages. Alternative names include folk football, mob football and Shrovetide football. These games may be regarded as the ancestors of modern codes of football, and by comparison with later forms of football, the medieval matches were chaotic and had few rules.
Harpastum, also known as harpustum, was a form of ball game played in the Roman Empire. The Romans also referred to it as the small ball game. The ball used was small and hard, probably about the size and solidity of a softball and was stuffed with feathers. The word harpastum is the latinisation of the Greek ἁρπαστόν, the neuter of ἁρπαστός, "carried away", from the verb ἁρπάζω, "to seize, to snatch".
The following is a glossary of traditional English-language terms used in the three overarching cue sports disciplines: carom billiards referring to the various carom games played on a billiard table without pockets; pool, which denotes a host of games played on a table with six pockets; and snooker, played on a large pocket table, and which has a sport culture unto itself distinct from pool. There are also games such as English billiards that include aspects of multiple disciplines.
The English word god comes from the Old English god, which itself is derived from the Proto-Germanic *gudą. Its cognates in other Germanic languages include guþ, gudis, guð, god, and got.
A football is the ball used in the sport of association football. The name of the ball varies according to whether the sport is called "football", "soccer", or "association football". The ball's spherical shape, as well as its size, weight, mass, and material composition, are specified by Law 2 of the Laws of the Game maintained by the International Football Association Board. Additional, more stringent standards are specified by FIFA and other big governing bodies for the balls used in the competitions they sanction.
A basketball is a spherical ball used in basketball games. Basketballs usually range in size from very small promotional items that are only a few inches in diameter to extra large balls nearly 2 feet (60 cm) in diameter used in training exercises. For example, a youth basketball could be 27 inches (69 cm) in circumference, while a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) men's ball would be a maximum of 30 inches (76 cm) and an NCAA women's ball would be a maximum of 29 inches (74 cm). The standard for a basketball in the National Basketball Association (NBA) is 29.5 inches (75 cm) in circumference and for the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA), a maximum circumference of 28.5 inches (72 cm). High school and junior leagues normally use NCAA, NBA or WNBA sized balls.
In archaeology, a stone ball or petrosphere is the name for any spherical man-made object of any size that is composed of stone. These mainly prehistoric artifacts may have been created or selected, but altered in some way to perform their specific function, including carving and painting.
Ground billiards is a modern term for a family of medieval European lawn games, the original names of which are mostly unknown, played with a long-handled mallet, wooden balls, a hoop, and an upright skittle or pin. The game, which cue-sports historians have called "the original game of billiards", developed into a variety of modern outdoor and indoor games and sports such as croquet, pool, snooker, and carom billiards. Its relationship to games played on larger fields, such as hockey, golf, and bat-and-ball games, is more speculative. As a broader classification, the term is sometimes applied to games dating back to classical antiquity that are attested via difficult-to-interpret ancient artworks and rare surviving gaming artifacts.
Episkyros, or episcyrus was an Ancient Greek ball game. The game was typically played between two teams of 12 to 14 players each, being highly teamwork-oriented. The game allowed full contact and usage of the hands. While it was typically men who played, women also occasionally participated.
Balloon, baloun, balloon-ball or wind-ball is a game similar to the modern game of volleyball, in which a leather ball is batted by the fist or forearm to prevent it from touching the ground. The game was played in ancient Rome where it was known as follis, the Latin word for a leather bag. Such a ball made of leather was quite heavy and so protection might be used such as a leather gauntlet or wooden bracer. The Roman game was considered a sport for boys and old men, as Martial wrote:
Comparison of association football (football/soccer) and rugby union is possible because of the games' similarities and shared origins.
In Canada and the United States, a football is a ball, roughly in the form of a prolate spheroid, used in the context of playing gridiron football. Footballs are often made of cowhide leather, as such a material is required in professional and collegiate football. Footballs used in recreation, and in organized youth leagues, may be made of rubber, plastic or composite leather.
