pool1
/puːl
/noun
1A small area of still water, typically one formed naturally.The natural lake water interchanges with the pool area water, keeping it clean....
- If you're uncertain about your natural pool's water quality, have it tested.
- On a buttress above a chasm is a series of tiny terraces, and under a hefty lintel of rock in the cliff above, a cave shelters the natural pool of water that attracted people to live in such a place.
Synonyms
puddle, pond
1.1A shallow patch of liquid lying on a surface: a pool of blood figurative the lamps cast pools of light on the wet streets...
- When Michael opened the door, Raymond shot him and left him lying in a pool of blood.
- There they found him lying in a pool of blood with multiple stab wounds to his face and body.
- A man was left lying in a pool of blood in a quiet residential street after being attacked and stabbed.
1.2A swimming pool: I spent all my time lounging around the pool...
- Many recreation centers and health clubs have beautiful pools, and open-water swimming can take you to lakes, reservoirs and even the ocean.
- One of the city's oldest pools, the Yeoville swimming pool, has received a sparkling, multi-toned blue mosaic facelift.
- A serious drama should be like a swimmer diving into a pool and swimming to the other side in one smooth, perfect trajectory.
Synonyms
swimming pool, baths, lido, piscina, plunge pool;
British swimming bath(s)
North American rare natatorium
1.3A deep place in a river: we soon reached the pool at the foot of the waterfall...
- Such rivers have cavernous deep pools fed by turbulent rapids at the head and a shallow tail leading to the next rapid.
- Police divers recovered the teenager's body from a deep pool in the river.
- Everywhere there are clear jade rivers with deep natural pools, surrounded by sun-warmed granite boulders.
verb [no object]
1(Of liquid) form a pool on the ground or another surface: sweat pooled in the hollow of my back...
- A police spokesman said its communication unit had been affected by the power cut and drivers were warned to use side lights on the M65 as water pooled on the surface.
- The science team members said then that they did not know whether the water was pooling above the surface in a lake, sea, or ocean, or flowing from reservoirs beneath the surface.
- If the water had pooled on the surface at Meridiani Planum, the science team members are not hazarding high bets on what shape it took.
1.1(Of blood) accumulate in parts of the venous system.Venous ulcers are sometimes called venous stasis ulcers because they were previously attributed to blood pooling in the veins....
- No longer being pumped around her circulatory system, blood has pooled and coagulated in these areas.
- Protection against clot formation in the legs can be mechanical to prevent blood pooling in the legs with early getting up after surgery or the use of elastic or pneumatic stockings.
Origin
Old English pōl, of West Germanic origin; related to Dutch poel and German Pfuhl.
puddle from Middle English:
Old English had a word pudd ‘ditch, furrow’, and a puddle was originally a small one of these. Pool, ‘standing water’ goes back to the same West Germanic root. The common Germanic heritage comes out in German Pudel(hund) the origin of the poodle (late 18th century). Poodle sometimes has the sense ‘lackey’, introduced when Lloyd George called Lord Balfour a poodle in Parliament in 1907. The colloquial verb poodle meaning ‘go around in a leisurely manner’ is found from the 1930s.
Rhymes
pool2
/puːl/noun
1A shared supply of vehicles or resources to be drawn on when needed: a car pool...
- As the mess hall was closed, I ordered a motor pool car and driver for the other men to go in town for dinner, on me.
- This promotes language proficiency to at least the same level of attention and importance as being able to drive the unit's vehicle of choice out of the motor pool.
- Troopers on foot at a gallop or in cars would race to the motor pools.
1.1A group of people available for work when required or considered as a resource: the typing pool...
- As the pool of available labour shrank, wages rose; as the population declined so did the demand for food and supplies, and prices followed suit.
- The pool of available people doing opinion writing is still tilted toward men.
- The fact that I think 51 per cent of the workforce available, the workforce pool, within a matter of five years' time, will be women.
1.2A common fund into which all contributors pay and from which financial backing is provided: big public investment pools...
- The funds are private investment pools for the rich, who understand the risks and can comfortably absorb potential losses, they say.
- Larger funds generally offer bigger risk pools yet funds with fewer and younger members may be a better option than funds with many older members.
- A ‘fund of funds’ is where a product provider selects funds from a pool of funds on behalf of the investor.
Synonyms
fund, reserve, kitty, pot, bank, purse;
jackpot, ante, stakes
1.3The collective amount of players' stakes in gambling or sweepstakes; a kitty: dividends are calculated by dividing the net pool by the stakes on the winners...
- The most popular forms of gambling were raffles, state lotteries, friendly wagers, casino gambling and office pools.
- Everyone pays a stake to the pool and nine cards are dealt to each player.
- At the start of the game, each player must pay the initial stake to the pool.
1.4 (usually the pools) another term for football pool. a small win on the pools...
- It is the first time in 40 years that the Scottish Football League has failed to gain money from the pools promoters.
2 [mass noun] A game played on a small billiard table using two sets of seven coloured and numbered balls together with one black ball and a white cue ball, with the aim of pocketing all one’s own balls and then the black.However, the hall will remain open on Thursday nights and Saturday nights during the summer for anyone who wants a game of pool, snooker or billiards....
- He took up snooker and eight ball pool, becoming good at both.
- However, cue games like billiards and pool exhibit that extreme sensitivity and instability highlighted by Maxwell.
3A group of contestants who compete against each other in a tournament for the right to advance to the next round: the sides in Pool A...
- The Tournament bracket pools don't become as popular with an unbalanced field.
- Both Sabre teams finished third in their respective pools after round robin play and advanced to their respective divisional play-off rounds.
- Wrestlers will fight each other within their pool, with the winners of the two four-man pools qualifying for the semi-finals.
4An arrangement, illegal in many countries, between competing parties to fix prices or rates and share business in order to eliminate competition: pool arrangements by the competing networks reduce individual costs...
- York's relatively buoyant businesses pay out more than £64 million to the central government business rates pool.
- The backers of this argument pushed it as the only realistic view, but it ignored the emerging company power increasingly manifested in rate discrimination and pools.
verb [with object]
1(Of two or more people or organizations) put (money or other assets) into a common fund: they entered a contract to pool any gains and invest them profitably...
- Mutual funds pool investors' money to purchase a variety of stocks and sometimes bonds.
- Both types of funds pool the assets of numerous investors into a single portfolio.
- These funds pool your money with those of other investors and invest in a portfolio of bonds.
1.1Share (resources or information) for the benefit of all involved: the skills of teachers can be pooled and shared...
- Some drivers pool their resources to share one or more cars.
- Either they could pool resources and share activist coordinators, or perhaps they could contract with an independent nonprofit to do it for them.
- The essence of insurance is to pool resources and share risk.
Synonyms
combine, put together, amalgamate, group, join, unite, lump together, merge;
fuse, conglomerate, agglomerate, coalesce, integrate;
share
Origin
Late 17th century (originally denoting a game of cards having a pool): from French poule in the sense 'stake, kitty', associated with pool1.