chessboard

[ ches-bawrd, -bohrd ]

noun

1. the board, identical with a checkerboard, used for playing chess.

chessboard

/ ˈtʃɛsˌbɔːd /

noun

1. a square board divided into 64 squares of two alternating colours, used for playing chess or draughts

Word History and Origins

Origin of chessboard¹

1400–50; late Middle English. See chess ¹, board

Example Sentences

He announced he was resigning—and leaned over the chessboard to stiffly shake the hand of Joseph Hoane, an IBM engineer who helped develop Deep Blue and had been moving the computer’s pieces around the board.

From MIT Technology Review

She was 20 when she sat down at a chessboard opposite the 75-year-old conceptual artist Marcel Duchamp.

From Washington Post

Who wins and loses is determined by an almost endless collection of factors, a movable chessboard around a basketball court, skill and intellect and physicality in new and unpredictable permutations.

From FiveThirtyEight

Last week, you navigated an 8-by-8 chessboard, each of whose squares had one piece.

From FiveThirtyEight

To do so, Washington would have to overcome the reflexive tendency of many of these — India, Pakistan, Russia, Iran — to see Afghanistan as a kind of geopolitical chessboard on which to enhance influence or checkmate another’s.

From Ozy

“Congo was clearly just a pawn in the global chessboard of West vs. East,” Holm says.

From The Daily Beast

Leo is strategic, the queen on the chessboard, the prime mover of the zodiac.

From The Daily Beast

But Indonesia, like most of its Asian neighbors, does not easily fit the stereotype of a piece on a strategic chessboard.

From The Daily Beast

While Saunders sat with his eyes on the chessboard, Eustace walked over to the window and examined the fastenings.

From Project Gutenberg

Nothing disconcerted, her lover remained with her in the house, and they amused themselves with a pack of cards and a chessboard.

From Project Gutenberg

The Annesley-Setons' first move on the social chessboard was to make use of a pawn or two in the shape of "society reporters."

From Project Gutenberg

Won't Cresswell open those sleepy eyes of his when he sees this move of mine on the chessboard?

From Project Gutenberg

Thus a chessboard was an ideograph, and stood for a gift, and sometimes a building.

From Project Gutenberg