History

 The Oxford English dictionary states that pool is generally "any of various types of billiards for two or more players" but goes on to note that the first specific meaning of "a game in which each player uses a cue ball of a distinctive colour to pocket the balls of the other player(s) in a certain order, the winner taking all the stakes submitted at the start of the contest" is now obsolete and its other specific definitions are all for games that originate in the United States of America.
In the United States, though the original "pool" game was played on a pocketless carom billiards table, the term later stuck to all new games of pocket billiards as the sport gained in popularity,[citation needed] and so outside the cue sports industry, which has long favored the more formal term pocket billiards, pool has remained the common name for the sport.