*STALEMATE
Originally,
the term was just stale—the mate part was added,
possibly originally in jest, because a stalemate, like a checkmate,
serves to end the game. Unlike checkmate, (from Arabic) and
chess itself, stale seems to have originated in the
French estaler (étaler), one of the meanings of which
is “to fix,” in the sense of “to set in place.” The latter
is related to the German stellen, “to place.”
*Inspired
by Charles Funk (1881–1957)
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