Checkmate

Part of speech: noun, verb

Pronunciation: /ˈt͡ʃɛkmeɪt/

Definitions

1. A scenario in chess where a king is under threat of capture and has no legal moves available
2. The decisive moment in a chess match that leads to an opponent's unavoidable loss
3. A situation in chess where one player has placed the opposing king in a position of unavoidable capture, leaving no legal moves for escape

Etymology: Nobody kills the king in chess. The game ends one move short of that, with the king trapped and helpless but never taken from the board. Yet for centuries people have explained the final cry as "the king is dead," a story the word's real history does not support. The phrase began in Persian as "šāh māt." The first half is plain: "šāh" means "king," the title that also gave English "shah." It descends from Old Persian "xšāyathiya," "king, ruler," and further back from an Indo-European root meaning to gain or possess. The second half is harder. In Persian, "māt" meant "amazed" or "at a loss," and it appears in various Persian languages with the sense "broken, paralyzed." So "šāh māt" meant "the king is dumbfounded," stuck and out of moves. It did not mean the king was struck down, and that matches how the game works: the king is left powerless without a blow ever landing. The dead-king reading comes from Arabic. Chess passed from Persia into the Arab world, and Arabic speakers borrowed the Persian phrase along with the game; early usage suggests the borrowing went in that direction and not the reverse. In Arabic, "māta" is the ordinary verb for "he died," and the Persian word sounded exactly like it. Whether that likeness played any part in shaping Persian "māt" is still debated. Either way, the sound-alike gave the phrase its grim popular gloss, which has outlasted the older and more accurate sense of a king left stunned and helpless. The Arabic phrase came into Europe with the game itself, which reached Christian lands through Muslim Spain and Sicily. Old French made it "eschec mat," Spanish "jaque mate," and English took it from French. It is recorded in Middle English by the first half of the 1300s as "chek mat." The figurative sense, to defeat someone completely, appeared in Middle English almost as soon as the chess term did. That Persian "šāh" has a second, larger family in English. On its own, "eschec" meant the warning that the king was in danger. English shortened it to "check," and its plural, "eschecs," became "chess," so the game is named after its king. The chequered cloth on which medieval officials counted money gave the royal Exchequer its name. From the Exchequer's system of tallies and counterfoils came the "check" that settles a bill, along with the British "cheque." When you pay a restaurant bill, you are using a word descended from a Persian king.

Synonyms: defeat, victory

Antonyms: escape, rescue