noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   The game of skittles or ninepins. dialectal, obsolete, uncountable

   "Playing kayles, i.e. throwing a stick at ninepins, at Smithfield, 13th century."

2. 2
   plural of kayle form-of, plural
3. 3
   A simple impartial game in combinatorial game theory, in which players take turns to knock out one pin or two adjacent pins from a line of imagined bowling pins. uncountable

Example

More examples

"Playing kayles, i.e. throwing a stick at ninepins, at Smithfield, 13th century."

Etymology

From Middle English keyles, plural of Middle English keyle (see Dutch kegel, German Kegel, Danish kegle, and Swedish kegla).

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.