Heavily tattooed American Matt Gone poses at the opening of a five-day tattoo exhibition in Venezuela. Photo: Juan Barreto / AFP / Getty Images
The pattern of black and white squares on a chessboard is described as being 'chequered' in British English and 'checkered' in American English. The squares themselves are known as 'cheques' or 'checks' respectively. But the verb 'to check' is spelled the same in both places.
棋盤(pán)上的黑白格子在英式英語(yǔ)中被描述為 'chequered'. 在美式英語(yǔ)中則是 'checkered'（注意兩種不同的單詞拼寫(xiě)）。在英語(yǔ)中方形的格子叫 'cheques' （英）或 'checks'（美）。不過(guò)在使用動(dòng)詞 'to check' 的時(shí)候拼寫(xiě)是統(tǒng)一的。
今日短語(yǔ)
'Checkmate' 出自國(guó)際象棋，漢語(yǔ)中說(shuō)“將！”。在一方把關(guān)鍵的一個(gè)棋子放到致對(duì)方于死地的時(shí)候說(shuō)一聲“將軍！”不過(guò)現(xiàn)在這個(gè)短語(yǔ)也用來(lái)表達(dá)“一次徹底的勝利”。
例句
The rebels surrounded the president's palace. He had no option but to agree to their demands: it was checkmate.
Unless we make some serious changes around this business, our competition will catch up and it will be checkmate.
It can also be used as a verb:
Garry Kasparov checkmated the chess computer after a fine series of moves.
請(qǐng)注意
Stalemate 僵局和 checkmate 的意思正好相反，stalemate 表示一種雙方僵持不下的局面。
I could only afford ￡150,000 for the house but the seller would go no lower than ￡155,000. We reached a stalemate and called the deal off.
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