chess
- 1A board game for two players, each starting with sixteen pieces that move by fixed rules across a chessboard, the aim being to checkmate the opposing king.
My grandfather taught me chess on a folding board when I was seven.
She was the youngest player ever to win the state chess championship.
UsageSay play chess, with no article, and a game of chess for one match.
- 2Any of several grasses of the genus Bromus that are generally regarded as weeds.
Chess had crowded out much of the wheat in the low corner of the field.
By midsummer the abandoned pasture was thick with chess and other weedy grasses.
Note
The name now lives chiefly in the United States, and it also turns up in the compound chess grass: in Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road (2007), hobbled animals gorge on "the dry chess grass".
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Michael Chabon wrote Gentlemen of the Road. en.wikipedia.org
- The novel's first book publication was in 2007. openlibrary.org
- The novel describes hobbled animals eating chess grass and contains the exact words “the dry chess grass”. en.wiktionary.org
Less common meaning
- 3One of the platforms, made of two or more planks fastened together with dowels, that form the flooring of a temporary military bridge.
ach chess consists of three planks.
1885, Edward S. Farrow, Farrow's Military Encyclopedia; A Dictionary of Military Knowledge
Practice
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Origins
Old Persian lies at the start of the chain. Its word passed through Middle Persian to Persian šāh ("shah, king") and then to Arabic šāh, the king in chess. Medieval Latin made it scaccus, Old French eschec, with the plural eschés, and Middle English ches or chesse. German Schach, Italian scacchi and French échecs are comparable, and check and shah come from the same source.
No one is sure. It may be connected with chess the game, because of the idea of being set out in rows or lines.