The Betting Pool Comes From a Card Game Hen
A pool is a small body of water. The shared-fund sense arrived by a stranger route.
A pool is a small body of still water, and also a shared fund or combined resource. The two are unrelated. The water is Old English *pol*. The shared fund comes from French *poule*, a hen, the stake in a card game — the pot everyone contributed to, imagined as a bird to be won. That gives *pool* in betting, *car pool*, *gene pool* and the game of *pool*, which was played for a collective stake.
- A small water. *A rock pool.*
- A swimming pool. *A pool.*
- A shared fund. *A betting pool.*
- A game. *A game of pool.*
- French — *poule*, a hen. *The fund sense.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | pool | A pool. |
| Verb | pool | Pooling. |
| Compound | car pool | A car pool. |
| Compound | gene pool | A gene pool. |
| Old English | pol | A pool. |
- Children played in the rock pool.Water.
- They pooled their money.Fund.
- Poule means a hen.Etymology.
Animals that became money words
- Pool — from *poule*, a hen, the card-game stake
- Capital — from *caput*, a head of cattle
- Fee — from a Germanic word for cattle
- Pecuniary — from Latin *pecus*, livestock
- Stock — originally a tree trunk, then livestock, then shares
The water is Old English *pol*. The shared fund is French *poule*, a hen, used for the stake in a game.
Are a swimming pool and a betting pool the same word?
No. One is Old English for a body of water; the other is French poule, a hen, used for a card-game stake.
Why is the game called pool?
Because players contributed to a collective stake, the pool, before the name attached to the game itself.