DRAUGHTS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does draughts mean? 

• DRAUGHTS (noun)
  The noun DRAUGHTS has 1 sense:

1. a checkerboard game for two players who each have 12 pieces; the object is to jump over and so capture the opponent's pieces

  Familiarity information: DRAUGHTS used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DRAUGHTS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A checkerboard game for two players who each have 12 pieces; the object is to jump over and so capture the opponent's pieces

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

checkers; draughts

Hypernyms ("draughts" is a kind of...):

board game (a game played on a specially designed board)

Meronyms (parts of "draughts"):

checker board; checkerboard (a board having 64 squares of two alternating colors)

Domain member category:

black ((board games) the darker pieces)

checker; chequer (one of the flat round pieces used in playing the game of checkers)

king (a checker that has been moved to the opponent's first row where it is promoted to a piece that is free to move either forward or backward)

white ((board games) the lighter pieces)

 Context examples 

She says she is afraid there will be draughts in the passage, though every thing has been done—One door nailed up—Quantities of matting—My dear Jane, indeed you must.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

He will give you almost as many men as you like at draughts, and beat you easily.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Soon cool draughts of air began to reach me, and a few steps farther I came forth into the open borders of the grove, and saw the sea lying blue and sunny to the horizon and the surf tumbling and tossing its foam along the beach.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

The wind, which only broke in puffs and draughts into that deep well of building, tossed the light of the candle to and fro about their steps, until they came into the shelter of the theatre, where they sat down silently to wait.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

I looked, and had an acute pleasure in looking,—a precious yet poignant pleasure; pure gold, with a steely point of agony: a pleasure like what the thirst-perishing man might feel who knows the well to which he has crept is poisoned, yet stoops and drinks divine draughts nevertheless.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Mrs. Phillips was always glad to see her nieces; and the two eldest, from their recent absence, were particularly welcome, and she was eagerly expressing her surprise at their sudden return home, which, as their own carriage had not fetched them, she should have known nothing about, if she had not happened to see Mr. Jones's shop-boy in the street, who had told her that they were not to send any more draughts to Netherfield because the Miss Bennets were come away, when her civility was claimed towards Mr. Collins by Jane's introduction of him.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

When he was sober he used to be fond of playing backgammon and draughts with me, and he would make me his representative both with the servants and with the tradespeople, so that by the time that I was sixteen I was quite master of the house.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Mrs. Weston was afraid of draughts for the young people in that passage; and neither Emma nor the gentlemen could tolerate the prospect of being miserably crowded at supper.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

The apothecary came, and having examined his patient, said, as might be supposed, that she had caught a violent cold, and that they must endeavour to get the better of it; advised her to return to bed, and promised her some draughts.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

He was taken ill in the night—quite prostrate he was—in consequence of Crab; and after being drugged with black draughts and blue pills, to an extent which Demple (whose father was a doctor) said was enough to undermine a horse's constitution, received a caning and six chapters of Greek Testament for refusing to confess.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)