tables

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of table.

   The restaurant set out extra tables for the evening rush.

   All the tables in the library were taken by noon.

   Note

   A regular plural that serves every countable meaning of table: pieces of furniture, the boards that games like snooker and draughts are played on, booths at a fair, flat trays. Watch for its identical twin, the name for backgammon. That word is plural-only and means a single game. So a game of tables or playing at tables points to the board game, not to the furniture.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of table.

   He tables the proposal whenever the budget comes up.

   The board tables any motion that lacks a second.

   Note

   A form whose meaning can flip with the reader. Applied to a proposal, the verb can mean putting a matter forward for discussion. In American usage it can also mean shelving it indefinitely. A sentence like he tables the motion is therefore ambiguous across audiences. In international writing, put forward or postpone says plainly which is meant. The older senses of feeding a guest or depicting are archaic or obsolete.

3. 3
   noununcountableplural

   The board game backgammon.

   The two old friends settled in for a long evening of tables.

   He kept a worn board for tables in the corner cabinet.

   Similarbackgammon

   Note

   A plural-only name for a single game. You play tables, never a table. Its natural construction is playing at tables, as in Thomas Keightley's The Fairy Mythology (1828), where Hervor plays at tables with King Gudmund. Phrases like at tables, a game of tables or a board for tables keep it apart from the plural of the furniture word.

   There one day as she was playing at tables with the king, one of the servants chanced to take up and draw Tirfing.

   They spent the winter evenings playing at tables by the fire.

4. 4
   noununcountableplural

   Any backgammon-like board game played on a board marked with two rows of twelve vertical points.

   In the corner of the tavern, two sailors sat over a game of tables, arguing about every throw of the dice.

   Anyone who knows backgammon can pick up other kinds of tables quickly, since the board stays the same.

   Note

   The family name rather than one rule set. Backgammon is a single kind of tables, and its relatives share the same board and differ in how they are played. In this wider sense, a game of tables may not be backgammon at all, so the narrower name for backgammon cannot be assumed. Like that word, it is plural-only.

5. 5
   nouncountableplural

   The four quarters, or the two halves, into which a backgammon board is divided.

   Checkers travel from the outer tables toward the player's home.

   Each of the board's four tables holds six points.

   Note

   Inside backgammon itself, the word stops naming the game and names the ground it is played on. A board can be read as two tables or as four, each section holding its share of the points the checkers cross. Players speak of the outer tables and the home tables. Here the plural is a count of real divisions, unlike the name of the game.

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