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Checkmate   Listen
noun
Checkmate  n.  
1.
The position in the game of chess when a king is in check and cannot be released, which ends the game.
2.
A complete check; utter defeat or overthrow.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Checkmate" Quotes from Famous Books



... will have his bridge at Larkin's, and the route to Chattanooga via Willa's Valley and the Chattanooga Creek, open for retreat; and if Johnston attempt to leave Dalton, Thomas will have force enough to push on through Dalton to Kingston, which will checkmate him. My own opinion is that Johnston will be compelled to hang to his railroad, the only possible avenue of supply to his army, estimated at from forty-five to ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... "game of cities" seems to have resembled our chess or draughts. The board was divided into five parts. Each player tried to checkmate the other by the skillful use of his men. Games of hazard with dice and astragaloi were most likely greater favorites with the topers than the intellectual ones hitherto described. The number of dice ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... singularly free from conversation. Nobody present felt inclined to be chatty. John Parker was wondering what Miguel Farrel's next move would be, and was formulating means to checkmate it; Kay, knowing what Don Mike's next move would be and knowing further that she was about to checkmate it, was silent through a sense of guilt; Mrs. Parker's eight miles in the saddle that afternoon had fatigued her to the point of dissipating ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... gods of grasp and gripe. More disquieting than that, however, were the indications of a new crusade, led by Mr. Mix, and directed against the Council. The Mix amendment, which was so sweeping that it prohibited even Sunday shows for charity, would automatically checkmate Henry; and the worst of it was that money was being spent with some effectiveness. Of course, the amendment wouldn't ever be adopted in toto—it was too sweeping, too drastic—but even a compromise on the subject of Sunday entertainments ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall

... could reply, Bertha, whose game was over, and who had just given an emphatic checkmate to her enemy, strolled across the room. She stood near the piano and could overhear the two; Kitty's eyes met hers, and Kitty's ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade

... said, as soon as he had well considered this epistle, "I have put up with many a checkmate at your hands, but not without the fair delight of a counter-stroke at the enemy. Here you afford me none of that. You are my master in every way; and quietly you make me make your moves, quite as if I were the black in a problem. You leave me to conduct your fellow-smugglers' ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... ambitious ensnarement," &c.; and, in your Re-examination, p. 14, "He should have said, I advised the Parliament to lay no burden of government upon them whom he (this Commissioner) thinks church officers, then had he spoken true." Now let the reverend brother take heed to checkmate, and that three several ways (but let him not grow angry, as bad players use to do). For, 1. Eo ipso that he denies the institution, by his principles he denies the prudence; for he that denieth the institution, and adviseth the Parliament ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... "Checkmate for Mr. Bygrave!" thought Mrs. Lecount, as she sealed and directed the letter. "The battle is over—the game ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... envelope; and then did an extraordinary thing for Robert Halarkenden. He looked at the address in the unmistakable, big, black writing and looked at the girl and stood a moment, with a question in his eyes. The girl flushed. "Checkmate in six moves" was quite enough to say to this girl; one did not have to play the game ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray

... carried out, and the mayor promptly took every means at his command to checkmate any movement of the suspected party. He arranged to shadow him by one of the best detectives in the country, while I agreed to notify him of the contents of any more suspicious telegrams passing over ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis

... the law into his own hands, to thrash him publicly, to make Monte Carlo impossible for him. And then, suddenly, he remembered his duty. They were trusting him in Downing Street. Chance had put into his hands so many threads of this diabolical plot. It was for him to checkmate it. He was the only person who could checkmate it. This was no time for him to think of personal revenge, no time for him to brood over his own broken life. There was work still to ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... disclose the sculptor's purpose. One thing alone was definite and unalterable, to combat the introduction of the Inquisition and the extermination of the Protestant Netherlanders by aid from the Spanish soldiery. The first checkmate given Philip's nefarious scheme was when the States-General compelled his removal of the troops, though at this time William was still Catholic in religion and a loyal subject of Philip, being in no sense a revolutionist. He was easily the first citizen of the Netherlands; ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... be imagined that Mr. Chamberlain and his noble colleagues had anything but beds of roses whilst pursuing the diplomacy adopted to checkmate the Bond. They had to gain national support without divulging their own proceeding, and were at the same time reduced to a situation which imposed a spartan fortitude in concealing and repressing involuntary perturbation in the presence of an ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas

... deep scheme of the Texan plotters, and neutralized the political advantage which had accrued to the slave power in the admission of Texas into the Union by the acquisition of California and New Mexico at the close of that war. It was a checkmate by destiny. Chance had at a critical moment aligned itself definitely on the side of modern industrialism in the American republic and given a decisive turn to the long ...
— Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 12 • Archibald H. Grimke

... companions appeared entirely engrossed by their game, I occupied myself with a book till I heard the ominous sounds, "Check! excuse me, the knight commands that square; you have but one move—checkmate!" ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... all, he sympathised with the Arab character; and in a thousand places sprinkled over the map of North-East Africa he made friends for himself and therefore enemies for the Mahdi. This was the first and superficially the most individual of the converging plans which were to checkmate the desert empire; and its effects were very far-reaching. Again and again, in subsequent years, when the missionaries of the Mahdist religion pushed northward, they found themselves entangled among tribes which the English power had not so much conquered as converted. The legend of the great ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton

... of theirs—and all the consequences flowing from it—collided with the efforts of free nations to build a just and peaceful world. The "cold war" between the communists and the free world is nothing more or less than the Soviet attempt to checkmate and defeat our peaceful purposes, in furtherance ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... the enemy might prevail, And the church doors snap With a thunderclap On a Christian soul in that devil's trap. But a wiser few, Who thought that they knew Cologne's Archbishop, replied, "Pooh, pooh! Just watch him and wait, And as sure as fate, You'll find that the Bishop will give checkmate." ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte

... don't. Look heah.' He bent forward quite romantically. 'I'm going to be perfectly frank. Of course yah know that when I came on board this ship I came—to checkmate yah.' ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... could be so precipitate that the significance of it could not be felt at the time, a reign that showed that the Pope was something more than the friend of the English throne—he was in matters of Church discipline its checkmate. This was the time that England trembled at the devilry of a king and rejoiced at the sun of a new learning that was slowly dispelling the fog ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... passion. 'And mind you, Thomasson,' she continued fiercely, 'you have got to side with me now! Cross me, and you shall have neither the living nor my good word; and without my word you may whistle for your sucking lord! But do my bidding, help me to checkmate this baggage, and I'll see you have both. Why, man, rather than let him marry her, I'd pay you to marry her! I'd rather pay down a couple of thousand pounds, and the living too. D'ye hear me? But it won't come to that if you ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman

... of a cattle ranch realizes she is being robbed by her foreman. With the help of Bud Lee, she checkmate's ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart

... Pennsylvania Dutch Dunkers. From the very first they have made the church central. When these great changes of which I have spoken began to occur, the leaders of that community began to take measures to checkmate the attractions of the towns for their young people. For example, Fourth of July was made a day of celebration at the church. When the people of other communities were flocking to town by hundreds, the youth of that community ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson

... card; hit, stroke, score; lucky hit, fortunate hit, good hit, good stroke; direct hit, bull's eye; goal, point, touchdown; home run, homer, hole-in-one, grand slam; killing [make money], windfall bold stroke, master stroke; ten strike [U.S.]; coup de maitre [Fr.], checkmate; half the battle, prize; profit &c (acquisition) 775. continued success; good fortune &c (prosperity) 734; time well spent. advantage over; upper hand, whip hand; ascendancy, mastery; expugnation^, conquest, victory, subdual^; subjugation &c (subjection) 749. triumph &c (exultation) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... are doing to me? You have stolen my daughter, man!" cried Doederlein with pathos. "But just wait. I will checkmate your plans. I will make you feel the ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... immense sum, much of it being gathered in halfpence, and carried on horseback to the appointed trysting-place. But Lawers was better than his word, for soldiers surrounded the house, and made the Macgregors prisoners. The game ended with checkmate, when the duped freebooters paid the death penalty in Edinburgh. Colonel David R. Williamson, the present laird of Lawers, has been long noted for his public spirit and eminent ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... "cue." Tryin' to make a "draw" with the wash bord, so as to "Uker" the ball, and "checkmate" the other club, he was "distansed," and his spectacles went flyin', smashin' the glass and shuttin' ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 23, September 3, 1870 • Various

... with relation to the towns of that portion of Kentucky—especially those occupied by Federal troops—made it an excellent point for Colonel Morgan's purposes. He was in a central position here, nearly equi-distant from all points of importance, and could observe and checkmate movements made from any of them. Georgetown is twelve miles from Lexington, and eighteen from Frankfort, the two points from which he had chiefly to anticipate attacks. Although not directly between these two places, Georgetown ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... bargaining for the freight. But we had all learnt confidence in him by this time—his increasing bodily weakness never seemed to affect his cleverness and resource—and no doubt occurred to me that he would contrive to checkmate this new move of the riding-officer's. Nevertheless, and partly I dare say out of curiosity, to have a good look at the soldiers, I slipped on my clothes and hurried ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... to some to flank the danger by turning far to the right or left, but that would have involved a long detour and delay in arriving home. At the same time, if any warriors were on the watch, they could easily checkmate him by accommodating their movements to his, and continually heading him off, whichever direction he took. He had considered all these contingencies, and felt no hesitation in pressing straight forward, despite the apparent ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis

... proceeded. Elfride played by rote; Stephen by thought. It was the cruellest thing to checkmate him after so much labour, she considered. What was she dishonest enough to do in her compassion? To let him checkmate her. A second game followed; and being herself absolutely indifferent as to the result (her playing was above ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... discussed a proposition he proposed making to a St. Paul jobber the next day. The account of the jobber, a large one, had been threatened by Lewis, the Jew manager of the Edwards Arms Company, the Rainey Company's only important western rival, and Sam was full of ideas to checkmate the shrewd trade move the Jew had made. At the table, the colonel had been silent and taciturn, an unusual attitude of mind for him, and Sam lay in bed and looked at the moon gradually working its way over the undulating abdominal hill, ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson

... was that every servant was armed with a stout cudgel, and half-a-dozen sturdy peasants of the neighbourhood were enlisted to come, willingly enough, to help to watch and checkmate the rough party from the town, against whom a bitter feeling of enmity existed for depriving the cottagers from getting quietly ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn

... sailors were to take two days' provisions. I had determined to push straight for the Bari islands, south of Regif hill. Should I be able to procure the supply of corn that I expected, it would at once checkmate the conspiracy. ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... two powers had been associated in that hugest of blunders, the Crimean War. Nor was the alliance a less blunder on this occasion. Napoleon's excuse for participation was the murder of a missionary in Kwangsi; but his real motive was a desire to checkmate Great Britain, and prevent the conquest of new territory. In the Opium War she had stopped at Nanking, leaving the pride of China unhumbled, and the state of relations so unstable that another war was required to place them on a better footing. England, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... on his face, To all the Saints commending; And candles to the Virgin vow'd, As save-alls 'gain'st his ending. Down fell the mate, he thought his fate, Checkmate, was close impending! ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... Ocean, thy solemn sadness, To thee abandon my weak devices, To thee let fly all my anxious longings: May thy cool breath to my heart bring healing! Let Death now follow, his booty seeking: The moves are many before the checkmate! Awhile I'll harass thy love of plunder, As on I scud 'neath thy angry eyebrows; Thou only fillest my swelling mainsail, Though Death ride fast on thy howling tempest; Thy billows raging shall bear the faster My little vessel ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... He had over 80,000 men with 275 guns against barely 40,000 with 194 guns of inferior strength. But though the Federals fought with magnificent devotion, and though the losses were very serious on both sides, the tactical result was a mutual checkmate. The strategic result, however, was a Confederate defeat; for, with his few worn veterans, Lee had no chance whatever of keeping his precarious hold ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood

... to his cost, Of pawns has he a many lost, And twice[8] his guard is broken; His castles help him not a mite, And see how lonesome stands his knight! Checkmate's against him spoken. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Even that my admirals fail to keep the tryst— A thing scarce thinkable, when all's reviewed— I strike this seaside camp, cross Germany, With these two hundred thousand seasoned men, And pause not till within Vienna's walls I cry checkmate. Next, Venice, too, being taken, And Austria's other holdings down that way, The Bourbons also driven from Italy, I strike at Russia—each in turn, you note, Ere they can act conjoined. Report to me What has been scanned to-day upon the main, And on ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... Checkmate.—The King is said to be in check when he is attacked by any Piece or Pawn, for it being a fundamental law of chess that the King can never be taken, whenever any direct attack upon him is made, he must be warned of his danger by the cry of check, and the player is then ...
— The Blue Book of Chess - Teaching the Rudiments of the Game, and Giving an Analysis - of All the Recognized Openings • Howard Staunton and "Modern Authorities"

... that the man has lit on the name you bore in England, and that when he returns to Rome he will try to fix it upon you by means of me. This is fearful to contemplate, and my heart quakes to think of it. But happily there is a way to checkmate such a devilish design, and it is within your own power to ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... that the south would fight rather than be devoured, and gave a breathing spell in which public opinion in the north rallied against the Twenty-one Demands and against the military pact with Japan. Thus it saved the independence of China. But, while it checked Japan, it did not checkmate her. She still expects with the assistance of Chang Tso Lin to make northern China her vassal. The support which foreign governments in general and the United States in particular are giving Peking ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey

... nothing can fix that levity to a recognition of the realities of things. Bolingbroke has not a word now about the cause of the Stuarts; for the moment he cannot think of that. His new scheme is to make out that his enemies were, after all, the true Jacobites; he will checkmate them that way—"in a month, if you please." On the very same day Mr. John Barber, the printer of some of Swift's pamphlets, afterwards an Alderman and Lord Mayor, writes to Swift and tells him, speaking ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... a shrug of his shoulders. "I mean to amuse myself. I shall move you about like pieces on a chess-board, and have a pretty game with you. How to checkmate the king with a knight and a princess, in any number of moves you like—that is the problem; and my princess has a strong power over the king where she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various

... to checkmate her at her own game by threatening to tell the story of the missing costumes," reflected Grace aloud. "I'll try it at any rate. But even if we do succeed in silencing Eleanor, where are we to get the money to pay back ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower

... Hilary, "that we are so often unsuccessful; but we'll checkmate them now! What can ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn

... enlighten you. Daily your books are more widely read. My enemy is a great novel reader. You publish that story, and what results? You not only tell that enemy my story, but you show him my way out of the difficulty, and show him how he can checkmate my every move. Perhaps, after I have escaped ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White

... rather you began. Remember our old conditions. You are not to checkmate me in three moves; and you are not to ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... this, and they did their best to checkmate him. Bogle thrust out his foot, and when Sparwick tripped heavily to the floor, he threw himself ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon

... followed an exciting half-hour while we waited, wondering what attitude the savages would take toward us, and trying to picture to ourselves the mighty potentate, Saavedra, who had been described as sitting in the midst of savage luxury, "surrounded by fifty servants," and directing his myrmidons to checkmate our desires to visit the Inca city on the "pampa ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... the crews, two months' wages were paid in advance. Captain Clerke commanded the Discovery; and the two crews numbered men of whom the world was to hear more in connection with the northwest coast of America—a young midshipman, Vancouver, whose doings were yet to checkmate Spain; a young American, corporal {182} of marines, Ledyard, who was to have his brush with Russia; and other ambitious young seamen destined to become famous traders on ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... your life 'at this job's been done by them whose little game Wallingford were going to checkmate!" declared one man. "I've allus said 'at he were running a rare old risk. We know what t' old saying is about new brooms sweeping clean—all very well, is that, but ye can smash a new broom if ye use it over vigorously. Wallingford were going ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

... conceivable how Miltitz could still have nurtured such a hope. Neither his wish to ingratiate himself with the Elector Frederick, and to checkmate the plans of Eck whom he detested, nor his personal vanity and flippancy of character, are sufficient to account for it. He must have learnt from his own previous personal intercourse with the Pope, and his experiences ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... gaily, "are we not stupid! Together we can't checkmate him—" They talked a great deal about chess. And how you can't expect to do so much with pawns and how you mustn't mind if you lose them. But how carefully you must guard the queen—or else you'll lose your king—and ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke

... invested with the franchise. This ought to be done not only for the sake of justice to the women, but to the men with whom they compete; for, just so long as there is a degraded class of labor in the market, it always will be used by the capitalists to checkmate and undermine the ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... exceptionally high wages, and was prepared to 'wink' at a moderate amount of dishonesty, so long as it affected only myself. It has a lowering influence upon one to live in a fog of lies and fraud, and the attempt to checkmate a fraudulent Asiatic ends ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)

... Patty, "I'd know if it moved again. Don't tell Mrs. Tucker or cook anything about it. You and I will try to checkmate that pack if there is anything uncanny in it. Now tell cook I am ready for luncheon if ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... time to-morrow, madame, I may have received a checkmate which will send me back forever to my studio, or I shall have a foot in a new career. Shall I tell you that the thought of the latter result distresses me?—doubtless from ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac

... still recognised his sovereignty. Gioberti resigned because this policy was opposed by Rattazzi and other of his colleagues in the ministry. It would have been a difficult role to play; Sardinia, while endeavouring to checkmate the reaction, might have become its instrument. The failure of Gioberti's plan cannot be regretted, but his forecast of what would happen if it were not ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... over these crooks excited him. He continued to cover the walnut-shell while with his free hand he drew his own money from his pocket. He saw that the owner of the game was suffering extreme discomfort at this checkmate, and he enjoyed ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... mightest think thyself skilful: but set up again, and thou shalt see." So they placed the pieces a second time, when he said in himself, "Open thine eyes or she will beat thee." And he fell to moving no piece, save after calculation, and ceased not to play, till she said, "Thy King is dead!—Checkmate." When he saw this he was confounded at her quickness and understanding; but she laughed and said, "O professor, I will make a wager with thee on this third game. I will give thee the queen and the right-hand castle and the left-hand ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... Francisco to arrest both officers and crew if the Americans touched at any Spanish port. Spain was still dreaming of the Pacific being 'a closed sea.' She took cognizance of Bering's exploits to the north, but she at once strove to checkmate an advance south from {56} the north, by herself advancing north from the south. It was in 1775 that Heceta had observed the turbid entrance to a great river and the opening to a strait that might ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut

... had been schooled in the East. Moreover, she was in the oil business. This last bit of intelligence naturally intrigued the man, and he undertook to gain further illumination, but only to have the girl pretend that he knew all about it. He accepted this checkmate with the best possible grace, but revenged himself by assuming the airs and privileges of a friend more intimate even than Miss Good had implied, a pretense that confused and even annoyed her. For some reason this ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... batteries were sufficiently strengthened to compel the British fleet to retire. Filled by this success with new enthusiasm for his Eastern projects, the Emperor of the French devised and set on foot a scheme for the alliance of Turkey and Persia in order to checkmate the ambitions of either Russia or Austria. About the end of April an envoy from the Shah arrived at Finkenstein. He was received with great demonstrations, and France was delighted to see the kings of the East seeking, as she believed, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... Warren," said the criminologist. "As a chess-player in the little game, you are a wonder. But, I think I may at last call 'Checkmate.'" ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... necessary for the company's counsel at Montgomery to give the matter immediate attention. The General Superintendent telegraphed to Watts, Judd & Jackson of Mrs. Maroney's intended coup d'etat, and ordered them to take the necessary steps to checkmate her, while Bangs ordered Porter to avoid acting ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton

... that, mother—you only thought of how you could thwart and checkmate me—how you could get your way—and force me to give up mine. It was abominable of you to go and see Enid, without a word to me!—it was abominable to plot and plan behind my back, and then to force yourself on her and insult her to her face! Do you think a girl of any spirit whatever would ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Sagan argued that the British envoy could not be very sure of his position yet. What had he proposed to the Duke? And how had the Duke answered him? What was to be the result of the visit, or would there be any? Selpdorf held the Duke's confidence. He must checkmate England and openly throw his influence into the German scale. No half courses could any longer avail ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard

... the fleet we usually have in Chinese waters became indispensable, not merely, as before, to protect our trade and our missionaries in China, but to checkmate the Spanish fleet, which otherwise held San Francisco and the whole Pacific coast at its mercy. When war was declared our fleet was necessarily ordered out of neutral ports. Then it had to go to Manila or go home. If it went home, it left the whole Pacific coast unguarded, save ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid

... charted on the map of political unity by an insect in Washington in the spring of 1903; and they seemed to him fixed. Russia held Europe and America in her grasp, and Cassini held Hay in his. The Siberian Railway offered checkmate to all possible opposition. Japan must make the best terms she could; England must go on receding; America and Germany would look on at the avalanche. The wall of Russian inertia that barred Europe across the Baltic, would bar America across ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... carload of bread sent in. This bread means some little biscuit sometimes called raised biscuit at home. I think carload means one of the carts in which they are delivered. At any rate, the boys had some food, though not at the expense of the police. On the whole, the checkmate of the police seems surely impending. They will soon have the buildings full, as the students are getting more and more in earnest, and the most incredible part of it is that the police are surprised. They really thought the arrests would frighten the others from going on. So everybody is getting ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey

... see his successive princely masters first the humble servants of Ts'i, then buffeted between Tsin and Ts'u, finally invaded and humiliated by barbarian Wu, only to receive the final touches of charity at the hands of savage Yiieh. His first act, when he at last obtained high office, was to checkmate Ts'i, the man behind the ruler of which jealous state feared that Lu might, under Confucius' able rule, succeed in obtaining the Protectorate, and thus defeat his own insidious design to dethrone the legitimate Ts'i house. The wily Marquess of Ts'i ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker

... George Canning, who had defeated the plans of the Holy Alliance in South America, was now prime minis-ter. He saw his chance to checkmate Metternich for a second time. The English and Russian fleets were already in the Mediterranean. They were sent by governments which dared no longer suppress the popular enthusiasm for the cause of the Greek patriots. ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... made ready to follow Anderson with all haste in his own machine. Rosalie hurriedly perfected preparations to accompany him. She was rejoining the house party that day, was consumed by excitement over the situation, and just as eager as Bonner to checkmate the untimely operations ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon

... enlighted her as to what political power meant and how it was wielded everywhere on earth as well as in Remsen City—the man was no mere dreamer and theorist. He had seen the point no less clearly than had Victor Dorn. But what concerned her, what set her to fluttering, was that he was about to checkmate Victor Dorn. What should she say ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips

... That was checkmate indeed to Charles who swore all manner of things in his mortification. But it was not until some six weeks later that he learnt by whose agency the thing had been accomplished. He learnt it, not a doubt, from ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... to her car as fast as she could, anxious to get back to Ruth and to devise some other move to checkmate the traitors. She even hoped, against hope, that Harriet had been induced to change her mind and that all would yet be well. But as Bab jumped aboard her car she saw another girl, running down the street, waving ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane

... channel, to Todos Santos, to appear before the Presidio, take the enemy in flank, and cooperate with us. The arrival of the Excelsior there is the last move of this little game, if I may so call it: it is 'checkmate to the King,' the clerical ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... port of Oboch on the eastern coast of Africa, near the entrance of the Red Sea. The place is not laid down upon the maps; nor is its naval and commercial importance known; but its proximity to Aden suggests that it may be intended as a checkmate to that English stronghold. In the great island of Madagascar she is founding mercantile establishments whose exact character have not as yet been divulged; but experience teaches us that these enterprises are likely to be pursued with promptness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... being Burns was!" interrupted John, without looking up. "How precisely he knew my feelings toward any one who would show me how to escape this checkmate!" And Lilian sprang to her feet, upsetting her workbasket, and ran to him and commenced talking hurriedly, while Mr. Reyburn, whose eyes had been resting on her face for some time, kept on singing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... election would lead to immediate secession on the part of even a single state. In the north of the Union they have been absolutely taken by surprise, and have hardly yet made up their minds as to the course they will pursue. If Congress had merely to deal with South Carolina, it could easily checkmate that one state; but the difficulty arises from the number of states, which either side with South Carolina or ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... going to meet anyone tonight I'd better be near to the place of meeting. I might hear something that would teach me just what to do to checkmate the ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock

... after-guard of homesteaders intrenched behind miles of barbed-wire fence and mazes of irrigating-ditches. The once open range was now a chessboard of agricultural endeavor, with the pawns steadying ploughshares as they crept from square to square until the opposing cattle king suffered ignominious checkmate, his prerogative of free movement gone, his army scattered, his castles taken, and his glory surviving only in ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert

... a check, almost a checkmate, and for a time Polly quite shook with fury, but after a little she sufficiently recovered herself to reflect that the reins of authority had not yet been absolutely placed in her hands, and it might be wisest for her to keep this defeat ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade

... were to govern as had they been the humblest of Hamiltonians. But this their great antagonist was in unblest ignorance of, for he, too, reasoned in the heat and height and thick of the fray; and he made himself ready to dispute every inch of the ground, checkmate every move, force Jefferson into retirement, and invigorate and encourage his own ranks. The majority in both Houses was still Federal, if diminished, and he determined ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... first move, and met checkmate; the second move would be through Allis's mother; he determined upon that course. All his old cunning must have surely departed from him if he could not win this girl. Fate was backing him up most strenuously. Diablo had been cast into his hands—thrust ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... enterprises! Britain will be forced to content herself with what she can take on the north, and Spain eventually will hold nothing worth having on the south. By the Lord, General Bonaparte fights well—he knows how to sacrifice a pawn in order to checkmate a king!" ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough

... is admirable. We lift our hats to this man. Napoleon gained the field without prejudice; but this man enters the list with hate and prejudice arrayed against him. He plays the pawns of chance with literature, religion, politics, and moves the queen so as to checkmate all adversaries. He flouts love, but to show the world that he yet knows the ideal, he occasionally pictures truth and trusting affection in his speeches and books. This entire game of life is to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... a prompt marriage was the only way to silence the town. This last checkmate, so evidently mortifying, was of a nature to drive her into some extreme action; for persons deficient in mind find difficulty in getting out of any path, either good or evil, into ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac



Words linked to "Checkmate" :   chess move, chess game, victory, triumph, mate, shell, chess, beat out



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