What is "halma"

Halma \Hal"ma\ (h[a^]l"m[.a]), n. [NL., fr. Gr. "a`lma, fr. "a`llesqai to leap.] (Greek Antiq.) The long jump, with weights in the hands, -- the most important of the exercises of the Pentathlon.

Halma \Hal"ma\ (h[a^]l"m[.a]), n. A game played on a board having 256 squares, by two persons with 19 men each, or by four with 13 men each, starting from different corners and striving to place each his own set of men in a corresponding position in the opposite corner by moving them or by jumping them over those met in progress.

n. (context board game English) A board game invented by (w: George Howard Monks) in which the players' men jump over those in adjacent squares.

n. a board game in which players try to move their pieces into their opponent's bases

Halma (from the Greek word ἅλμα meaning "jump") is a strategy board game invented in 1883 or 1884 by George Howard Monks, a US thoracic surgeon at Harvard Medical School. His inspiration was the English game Hoppity which was devised in 1854.

The gameboard is checkered and divided into 16×16 squares. Pieces may be small checkers or counters, or wooden or plastic cones or men resembling small chess pawns. Piece colors are typically black and white for two-player games, and various colors or other distinction in games for four players.

Halma (1892–1909) was an American Thoroughbred racehorse.

Halma may refer to:

• Halma, a board game invented by George Howard Monks, an American thoracic surgeon at Harvard Medical School
• Nicholas Halma (1755-1828), mathematician and translator
• Halma (actor), film actor of the 1910s and '20s, e.g. Le Miracle des loups (1924 film)
• Halma (horse), an American Thoroughbred racehorse
• Halma, Minnesota, a city in the United States
• Halma plc, a group of technology companies that makes products for hazard detection and life protection
• Halma, an 1895 novel by Benito Pérez Galdós, basis of the film Viridiana
• Halma, fictional planet in the science fiction novel Emphyrio by Jack Vance