Skip to main content
PlainSpell

baize

/beɪz/noun, verb

baize is a noun meaning “A thick, soft, usually woolen cloth resembling felt; often colored green and used for coverings on card tables, billiard and snooker tables, etc” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled B-A-I-Z-E and has one syllable, and it appears about once in every 15 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of baize is baizes.

What does baize mean?

noun

  1. 1

    A thick, soft, usually woolen cloth resembling felt; often colored green and used for coverings on card tables, billiard and snooker tables, etc.

  2. 2

    datedA coarse woolen material with a long nap; usually dyed in plain colors.

verb

  1. 1

    To cover or line with baize.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce baize?

  • /beɪz/

Baize has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-baize.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of baize

  • baizes plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • baizing participle, present
  • baized participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is baize?

Baize appears about once in every 15 million words in written English, the 115,751st most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Words people confuse with baize

Sounds like: bays (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).

Sources: English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

Baize in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense woollen cloth used for covering card tables etc:

LanguageWords
Frenchdrap de billard, serge
Spanishtapete, bayeta

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does baize come from?

From French baies, feminine plural of adjective bai (“bay-colored”) mistaken as a singular noun.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).