Baize

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Baize

Baize is a coarse woollen (or in cheaper variants cotton

Cotton

Cotton is a soft, staple fiber that grows in a form known as a boll around the seeds of the cotton plant a shrub native to tropical and subtropical regions around the world, including the Americas, India and Africa....
) cloth, sometimes called "felt

Felt

Felt is a non-weave cloth that is produced by matting, condensing and pressing fibers. While some types of felt are very soft, some are tough enough to form construction materials....
" in American English

American English

PhonologyIn many ways, compared to English language in England, North American English is conservative in its phonology. Some distinctive accents can be found on the East Coast of the United States , partly because these areas were in contact with England, and imitated prestigious varieties of English English at a time when those varieties we...
based on a similarity in appearance.

It is most often used on snooker and billiards tables to cover the and .

The surface finish of baize is not very fine (and thus increases friction, perceptibly slowing the balls

Billiard ball

Billiard balls are used in cue sports, such as carom billiards, pocket billiards, and snooker. The number, type, diameter, color, and pattern of the balls differ depending upon the specific game being played....
down, from a player's perspective).

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Encyclopedia

Baize is a coarse woollen (or in cheaper variants cotton

Cotton

Felt

American English

Billiard ball

Nap (textile)

Primarily, nap is the raised surface on certain kinds of textile, such as velvet. Nap can refer additionally to other surfaces that look like the surface of a napped cloth, such as the surface of a felt or beaver hat....
; snooker

Snooker

Snooker is a cue sport that is played on a large baize-covered snooker table with pockets in each of the four corners and in the middle of each of the long side cushions....
, in which understanding of the effects of the nap is part of the game, uses the nappy variety, while pocket billiards

Pocket billiards

Pocket billiards, most commonly referred to as pool. It is the general term for a cue sport played on a specific class of billiards table, having 6 receptacles called pockets along the rails, in which billiard ball are deposited as the main goal of play....
(pool) and carom billiards use the napless type. Table baize is available in many grades, with pool hall

Pool hall

A billiard[s], pool or snooker hall is a place where people get together for playing cue sports such as pocket billiards, snooker or carom billiards....
s preferring smooth, "fast" worsted

Worsted

Worsted , is the name of a yarn, the cloth made from this yarn, and a yarn weight category. The name derives from the village of Worstead in the England county of Norfolk....
woollen baize, while rather more fuzzy, "slow" cloth is common used for .

For gaming use it is traditionally dye

Dye

A dye can generally be described as a colored substance that has an Chemical affinity to the Wiktionary:substrate to which it is being applied....
d green, in mimicry of a lawn (see Cue sport, "History"), thus the common (British English

British English

British English or UK English is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere....
) phrase "the green baize", a metaphoric way to refer to snooker itself. Today, a wide variety of colours are now used for tables (for other uses such as clothing it has always been available in other colours).

The word is related to the cloth term "bays" (sometimes encountered as "bays and says").

Baize

See also