a game played on a billiard table in which players hit a white ball with a cue in order to send strike one of 21 coloured balls and send them in a set order into the pockets around the table: compare billiards, pool2
a position of the balls in the game of snooker in which a direct shot would lose points
said to be from British army slang snooker new military cadet, of unknown origin. The game was devised by army officers in India in the 1870s and is supposed to have been named by one of them because of the inept play of another