Word of the Day

carom \KAIR-uhm\, noun:
1. A rebound following a collision; a glancing off.
2. A shot in billiards in which the cue ball successively strikes two other balls on the table.

intransitive verb:
1. To strike and rebound; to glance.
2. To make a carom.

transitive verb:
To make (an object) bounce off something; to cause to carom.

The cart smashed into the steep hillside in explosive caroms and bounces, sending billows of dust and rock into the air.
--Ev Ehrlich, Grant Speaks

Three blocks away, in the Rue des Jardiniers, four Moroccan children were kicking a filthy soccer ball up and down the street. It caromed off the parked cars, rolled into the gutter, was kicked again, leaving dirty blotches where it had smacked against the vehicles' fenders.
--Philip Shelby, Gatekeeper

The anger caroms around in our psyches like jagged stones.
--Randall Robinson, Defending the Spirit

Carom derives from obsolete carambole, from Spanish carambola, "a stroke at billiards."