Zugzwang

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Derek Osgood. I’m in North New York, near Saranac Lake.

Okay, great. Welcome to the show.

I am interested in the history of the word zugzwang.

Excuse me, what did you call me?

It’s a chess term.

Chess.

Zugzwang.

And what got you interested in that?

I actually started studying chess recently, and I came across the word, and it just was so strange to me personally.

I figured out what it meant, but I’d just like to know the history.

What does it mean?

Basically, in chess, it means that there’s no good option. You have to move somewhere.

Exactly.

Right. In chess, there’s no passing your turn. You have to move a piece, and sometimes you’re going to move your piece into jeopardy because that’s the only move you have, right?

Right.

It’s not necessarily a stalemate then, which is another chess word, right?

Right.

It’s like you don’t have any good choice.

Exactly.

You’re going to make a bad decision either way, like a rock and a hard place.

Exactly.

So we should spell this word, Z-U-G-Z-W-A-N-G, right?

Yeah, and then I’ve also heard it without the G at the end as well.

Oh, really?

Oh, really?

I’ve never heard that.

Yeah.

Sücksfang.

And this is clearly not an English word, German word, right?

Any English speaker looking at this word or hearing would know right away we borrowed this from somewhere else.

And we did because a lot of the good chess literature back in the…

Like the 1850s or so?

Yeah, yeah. It was written in German.

Right, because that’s where the minds were, right?

Yeah. And it’s a handy shorthand for saying what we’re using a lot more words to say.

And I’ve seen it borrowed into geopolitics as well to talk about political positions where you feel compelled to make a move because certain constituents who is expected, but there’s no good move left to you.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There’s a phrase in German that means to put under.

Put under.

Throw under the bus?

No, put under Zugsvang.

Oh, I see.

Put under Zugsvang.

Yeah.

So it’s been in English for how long now?

About 100 years or so?

Yeah, a little over 100 years.

And have you run into Zwischenzug?

Excuse me?

No.

Fish and soup? I would like some vicious swas.

That’s another chess term. It’s got that same tzug in there.

So the tzug suffix is to move or to pull?

Yeah, and the sficion is intermediate, so it’s a move that you don’t expect.

Look that one up.

Okay. Tzug.

Yeah. Thank you very much. I wanted to know more of the history of it and that other word that seems very interesting as well. Yeah, check that one out.

Sficion tzug. Well, if you ever become a grandmaster, remember the little people, all right?

That would be us.

Well, I will. Thank you.

Thanks for calling, Derek. Well, thank you.

Bye-bye. Thanks. Bye-bye.

As Jane Nichols said, English is a language that goes down dark alleys and beats other languages over the head and then rifles through their pockets for new words.

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