GRAPH-WIDE SEARCH
MEASURE THE GRAPH ↗NOT JUST A DICTIONARY LOOKUP
6 EVIDENCE COLLECTIONSSEARCH
THE GRAPH.
Find a modern word—or search sideways through reconstructed roots, historical forms, meanings, languages, scholars, sources, claims, disputes, and witnesses.
011
MODERN ENTRY POINTS
WORD DOSSIERS
023
ATTESTED / RECONSTRUCTED / BOUNDARY
HISTORICAL FORMS
●
Present-Day English / Indo-European
checkmate
an inescapable chess defeat; complete thwarting
- DATE
- 14th century–today
- MATCH
- exact historical form
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Middle English / Indo-European
chekmaten / chekmat
to checkmate or frustrate; the mating position
- DATE
- 14th–15th centuries
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
Classical Arabic / Afro-Asiatic
māt
checkmated; alternatively interpreted as “has died”
- DATE
- Arabic chess vocabulary
- MATCH
- gloss
- DOSSIERS
- 1
033
WHERE INTERPRETATION IS TESTED
CLAIMS & DISPUTES
SCHOLARLY DISPUTES / 2
openprobableexact word
Does checkmate literally mean the king is dead?
That is a longstanding Arabic analysis, but Merriam-Webster and Encyclopaedia Iranica favor a Persian loan meaning left, helpless, broken, or paralyzed.
resolvedestablishedexact word
Is figurative checkmate a late metaphor?
Not entirely. Merriam-Webster reports Middle English chekmaten with both chess and frustrate senses.
CONTRARIAN TRUTHS / 1
RANK 181GRADE A-exact ranked word
The king is not securely dead.
The familiar “shāh māt = the king died” translation matches Arabic morphology, but the better-supported historical analysis treats māt as a Persian loan meaning helpless, broken, or at a loss.
041
BOOKS / DICTIONARIES / ARTICLES / DATABASES
SOURCES
051
FIRST USES & HISTORICAL OBJECTS
ATTESTATION WITNESSES
06
SEARCH IS DISCOVERY, NOT PROOF
EVERY RESULT OPENS A PERMANENT EVIDENCE RECORD.
Matching text only locates a record. It does not raise confidence, settle a dispute, establish cognacy, or turn a source report into direct inspection. Follow the result into its citations and editorial limits.