pools

British

/ puːlz /

plural noun

Also called: football pools. an organized nationwide principally postal gambling pool betting on the result of football matches

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of pools

C20: from _pool ² (in the sense: a gambling kitty)

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

pools

Some of that can be attributed to people having insufficient emergency savings or other pools of funds to turn to during a financial crunch, Shamrell said.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 3, 2026

Microsoft’s new data center in Wisconsin will use about only four Olympic swimming pools of water this year, half as much as a car wash.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 31, 2026

Over two days, the deluge was equivalent to nearly two million Olympic-size pools of water.

From Salon ● Aug. 28, 2026

The results show that Timpanogos Rock Glacier contains about 1.5 million cubic meters of frozen water, enough to fill roughly 600 Olympic swimming pools.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 28, 2026

Moonlight pours in and pools in the nest.

From "Willodeen" by Katherine Applegate

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023