this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2025
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.....I thought it was from Medieval Britain, and probably thought that cause I see it frequently in Medieval era movies/shows and novels. I never would have guessed somewhere outside Europe.
pretty much everything is from outside europe
"Shah Mat" is from Persian. As in your leader, the "Shah", is helpless, or stumped, "Mat". This phrase is what slowly evolved into 'Checkmate'.
Heeeeey, interesting note (and probably related?), 'mat' (or 'maat') is Arabic for died!
In Arabic we say كِش مات kish maat to mean checkmate. Here is the etymology of checkmate:
In Arabic a check is كِش مَلِك:
كِش kish means to recoil
and مَلِك malik means king
So when it's a checkmate you say مات maat 'died' because it's over now ت
Indoeuropean languages are fucking cool. Shah Mat in Persian, checkmate in English, Jaque Mate in Spanish. Jaque Mate is eerily close to Jeque Muerto (dead shah).
"Shah mat" is also how you declare the end of the game in Russian, "шах и мат" they say
It was in the opening cutscene from Age of Empires II, that's how you know it's medieval European in origin.