Carom means to bounce off a surface at an angle, like when a basketball hits the backboard and ricochets toward the hoop, or when a hockey puck strikes the boards and bounces back onto the ice.

The word comes from billiards, a game played on a felt-covered table where players use a stick called a cue to hit balls. In billiards, a carom shot happens when the cue ball strikes one ball, then bounces off and hits another. Good billiards players learn to calculate these angles precisely, making the ball carom exactly where they want it to go.

You might hear someone say a soccer ball caromed off the goalpost, or that a stone caromed across the surface of a pond when skipped just right. The word suggests a glancing collision rather than a direct hit: the object strikes something at an angle and deflects in a new direction.

As a noun, a carom is the bounce itself, or the shot in billiards.

Sometimes people use carom to describe pinball-style movement, when something bounces from surface to surface. A marble might carom around inside a metal can, hitting the sides repeatedly before finally settling at the bottom.