English Language & Usage Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
The word zugzwang means a move in chess which forces your opponent to make a detrimental move; a move causing all of your opponent's options to be moves which will worsen their situation. Although it is definitely an English word, appearing in most English dictionaries, when I have tried to find out the origin of the word the only information I have found is that it is a German word meaning "compulsion to move".
Does anyone know how this word entered the English vernacular?
Apparently it entered the English language from publications on “chess game” around the 1930s. From which its usage spread to to other game and sports.
Usage notes: Zugzwang typically refers to a situation in which a player is forced to make a disadvantageous move though he or she would prefer not to make a move.
(Wiktionary )
The earliest known use of the term zugzwang in English was on page 166 of the February 1905 issue of Lasker's Chess Magazine.The term did not become common in English-language chess sources until the 1930s, after the publication of the English translation of Nimzowitsch's My System in 1929.
(Wikipedia)
