Combined resources, money, or efforts together with other people to share the cost or benefit of something.
From 'pool,' which originally meant a small body of water (from Old English 'pol'), but evolved to mean a shared fund or common resource through metaphorical extension. The gambling meaning influenced the financial meaning in the 19th century.
When people pool resources, they're literally and metaphorically diving into the same water—this metaphor is so natural that almost every language has a similar concept, showing how humans instinctively understand that sharing spreads both burden and benefit!
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