Okay so, I’ve been arguing with people over this for like 7 months. You say checkmate in checkers...but you also say it in chess? That doesn’t even make sense! It should be chessmate! People keep saying checkmate checkmate checkmate. No, it’s chessmate. This issue has been bugging me for the past 9 months and I want peoples opinion on this.
This isn't something someone can have an opinion on. Chess uses checkmate. Checkmate basically means "the king is captured/dead". If anything it's more correct to use it in chess simply because there's no king piece in checkers. Regardless of what you want to call it, it'll always be checkmate.
I voted "checkmate" for a number of reasons. (1) Checkers is actually only called that in America. In Europe it's called draughts. Chess at least has a uniform name in the English language. (2) I've never heard anyone use the term checkmate in checkers and I can't find any mention of it on any webpage explaining the rules. (3) The "check" term in both games is derived from the Persian word "shah" which means king. While both games feature kings in some way, chess requires you to capture only one. In checkers, you have to remove every piece (including every king) to win the game, so the closest thing to a correct equivalent would be "checksmate" or something like that.
Whenever I play checkers and I get my checker to the otherside of the checkerboard, I slam that checker down and yell "CHECKMATE, KING ME, ******" and thus I say checkmate for both checkers and chess.
