喜樂美語

核心畫面

Hold the board at the last moment of a game. The king is being attacked, and every door is shut at once: no safe square to step to, no way to take the attacking piece, nothing to put in between. Nobody actually picks the king up — the game simply stops, because there is no move left that changes anything. That is the picture the whole word carries: not being knocked down, but being left with nowhere to go.

可以想成棋局的最後一刻。王正在被攻擊，而所有的門同時關上了：沒有安全的格子可以走，吃不掉攻擊的棋子，也擋不住。沒有人…更多收起可以想成棋局的最後一刻。王正在被攻擊，而所有的門同時關上了：沒有安全的格子可以走，吃不掉攻擊的棋子，也擋不住。沒有人真的把王拿起來。棋局就這樣停住，因為再怎麼走都改變不了結果。這就是整個字背後的畫面——不是被打倒，而是無處可去。

From the word’s history

Wiktionary traces checkmate through Middle English chekmat and Old French eschec mat to Arabic and Classical Persian šāh māt, the king is amazed, or stunned. The old phrase already holds the modern picture: the king is not captured, he is frozen.

Wiktionary 記載這個字經中古英文 chekmat、古法文 eschec mat，上溯到阿拉伯文與古典波斯文的 šāh māt，意思是「王愣住了」。這個古老的說法裡已經有了今天的畫面：王沒有被抓走，是動彈不得。

Wiktionary (kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:237888520:33417), etymology_text supplied in the evidence packet

Two branches

棋盤上：王被封死的那一刻

這一支就是畫面本身，只是分別以「盤面」「動作」「喊出來的話」三種身分出現。

noun · B2

In chess, the position at the end of a game in which one player's king is being attacked and there is no move that can save it, so that player loses.

將死

棋盤外：怎麼走都沒用的處境

畫面整個搬到現實裡。重點不是「輸了」，而是「所有出路都被封死」，而且是被對方算到這一步的。

noun · C1

A situation away from the chess board in which someone has been completely beaten and has no move left that could help them.

徹底落敗、無路可走的局面

原始詞典資料6 筆記錄

以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。

checkmateintj/ˈt͡ʃɛkmeɪt/

  • 1

    board-gameschessgamesWord called out by the victor when making a move that wins the game.

  • 2

    Said when one has placed a person in a losing situation with no escape.

checkmatenoun/ˈt͡ʃɛkmeɪt/

  • 1

    board-gameschessgamesThe conclusive victory in a game of chess that occurs when an opponent's king is threatened with unavoidable capture.

    • This immediately ends the game, provided that the move producing the checkmate position was in accordance with Article 3 and Articles 4.2 – 4.7.
  • 2

    Any losing situation with no escape; utter defeat.

checkmateverb/ˈt͡ʃɛkmeɪt/

  • 1

    board-gameschessgamesTo put the king of an opponent into checkmate.

    • My opponent checkmated me in four moves!
    • The game is won by the player who has checkmated his/her opponent’s king.
  • 2

    To place in a losing situation that has no escape.

    • Where is it? What does SCP-3125 look like? Its motivation, its origins, its modus operandi— how much of that can be known? Does it have to be known, to solve the problem? Does it matter how intelligent the intelligence is, once it's inside the box, once it's checkmated?

資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。