Martha!

I really don’t understand your antipathy to “career”. I will grant you that “careen” is probably more common now, but how can you be opposed to using the more historically correct word, “career”? And blaming it on spellcheck!!!??

Re “carom”, there is a French word with the same origin (I imagine), “carambolage”. It is generally used for car accidents, where several cars run into each other and bounce off each other, like balls bouncing off the sides of a billiards table. It’s a horrible event, but a beautiful word.

I also found this, which was interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrom