Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2024 September 11

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September 11

Checkerboard or chessboard??

Some dictionaries say that either term is always acceptable. Other dictionaries say that checkerboard is always acceptable, but that chessboard is acceptable only when it has chess pieces on it. Which is correct?? Georgia guy (talk) 14:33, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

@Georgia guy: This is likely a WP:ENGVAR thing. In British English, it's more often called a draughts board or chessboard, depending on what it's being used for. Checkers and checkerboard, when used, are usually spelt chequers and chequerboard respectively. [1] [2] [3] . Bazza 7 (talk) 14:48, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

"Checkerboard" also refers more narrowly to the pattern itself. These are fine degrees of meaning, but if one used the term "checkerboard" to refer to a board being used to play chess, that visual pattern would be more directly emphasized in my mind. It would seem to be a deliberately literary choice of words, though. "Chessboard" is much more natural. Remsense ‥ 论 15:07, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Flat surfaces with this pattern are often used for camera calibration. The OpenCV docs seem to use either term indiscriminately: [4]. This tutorial uses "chess board" for an object that clearly does not have the appropriate shape and size to put chess pieces on: [5]. I do find that "checkerboard" is usually a closed compound written as a single word, but "chess board" is more likely to be an open compound with a space. If some of your dictionaries recommend against "chessboard" in at least some contexts, that could be just because they would write it as two words with a space. I wonder whether they would prefer "checkerboard" or "chess board" as an alternative to "chessboard." --Amble (talk) 15:29, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

In the technical heraldic descriptive language of Blazoning, an abstract pattern of squares in two alternating colors is known as "chequy", or a more modern alternative spelling is "checky". You wouldn't encounter the word in general use, but its meaning is exact in specifying a pure graphic pattern without reference to a board of any kind... AnonMoos (talk)

One thing to keep in mind is that the board is "checked" in terms of its pattern. The pattern would seem to make it easier to play checkers, while chess could probably be played fairly easily on an 8 x 8 grid with all the squares the same color. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:26, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Note that chess and check, along with the derived terms checker, checkers, checked, etc., all come from Persian Shah, referring to the king in a game of chess. --Amble (talk) 16:54, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Maybe it shouldn't, but it tickles me considerably that every sense of the English word check is derived from the chess sense. Remsense ‥ 论 16:56, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

One of those derived terms is exchequer, literally "chessboard", a checkered cloth for counting coins.  Card Zero  (talk) 08:16, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Baseball Bugs has just been clobbered on the Humanities and Language desks. One more for him:

You say "chess could probably be played fairly easily on an 8x8 grid with all the squares the same color." Do you know how the bishop and the queen move?

[6] (at 1:41:58) 80.44.89.207 (talk) 18:20, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I know how the chess pieces work. Do you? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:24, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, it's not that difficult if one pays a little bit of attention. If the board were 16 × 16 there would be constant visualization problems, but it's still manageable at 8 × 8. Remsense ‥ 论 18:26, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

You can certainly do it, but you can do it in checkers too, so I'm not completely sure I follow Bugs's point. It definitely optimizes chess calculations to know that bishops stay on a color and knights change color every move. I bet even grandmasters rely on that. --Trovatore (talk) 19:59, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

another odd wördle.de answer (Sept 10 answer)

Hello friends, any idea what "fütze" means? Is it slang? Archaic? t.y. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 15:30, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Google Translate says it means "fuss". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:20, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

In what language? No it doesn't?

I can't find it on wiktionary. Your closest guess (if it's germanic) might be related to wikt:Pfütze, unless like you say it's slang or a recent borrowing. SamuelRiv (talk) 16:32, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I specified German-to-English, and it translated it as "fuss". Try it! ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:25, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I suggest you play around with Google Translate a bit more, including with incomplete words and phrases in other languages. That's not what it's literally trying to tell you.

Meanwhile, you can search Google for "fütze" in quotes and see how it's actually used in context. SamuelRiv (talk) 18:33, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm just telling you what Google Translate says. Whether it's correct or not, the only "guessing" is by Google Translate. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:52, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

If you're posting on the ref desk you should take some responsibility for the correctness of your response. Google Translate did not "guess" as to the meaning. It "guessed" that you made a typo. SamuelRiv (talk) 20:28, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I specified German-to-English. I put "fütze" under German and it gave me "fuss" under English. It also said "Did you mean: pfütze" (which apparently means "puddle"). I'm not going to claim that Google Translate is any sort of oracle. But don't yell at me for what Google Translate came up with. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:58, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I strongly ask you again that you take responsibility for the reliability of answers you post on the Reference Desk. SamuelRiv (talk) 07:29, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

I am not responsible for the answers that Google Translate gives. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:53, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Based on Google Ngrams and Google Books, I suspect that it's a possibly-archaic variant of Pfütze. GalacticShoe (talk) 16:29, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Almost all the apparent hits in the Google Books search are scanning errors, for unrelated words as different as "süeze", "-sätze", "kurze", "stütze" and others. There was only one hit I saw where it was genuinely written as an eye-dialect spelling of "Pfütze", and one that contained a family name that was actually "Fütze". No, it's not a word in German, neither dialectal nor archaic. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:07, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Tracks for this database :( Thank you very much.70.67.193.176 (talk) 22:26, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

The Grimm´s dictionary lists "Futz", a term for vagina, presumably related to the current word "Fut". There may be a plural, "Fütze". It seems to be used in Alemannic areas. I have never heard it in 80 years, but I may speak to the wrong people. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 06:38, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

I think "Fotze" is a fairly common slang term in current German. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:14, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Deutsches Wörterbuch lists Futz as an older or dialectal variant of Fotze. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:17, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Although it is very odd that a mainstream word game would have as its solution a dated variant spelling of a highly vulgar, sexual term, to begin with. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:19, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

In several parts of Germany, words beginning with 'Pf' are often pronounced without the initial 'P'. 'Pfütze' is actually given as one of the examples for this by the Leibniz Institute for German Language. --Morinox (talk) 13:27, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Seems to have been the case for early Yiddish, as well. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:14, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Huh. All this time I assumed that wikt:futz was a simple minced oath for "fuck" since I'd only encountered it as "futzing around with" in the sense of playing with a problem (basically etymology 2, sense 2). Could it have crossed back into German in altered form? Matt Deres (talk) 15:32, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

As the word, in its many variants, have a very old history in German, I'd rather stipulate that the English word arrived via German immigrants. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 15:59, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Them futzing Angels, Saxons and Jutes... --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 16:19, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Further back, it gets even futzier... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 18:13, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

The word may be of the Untereichsfeld (lower Eichsfeld) dialect. See de:Dialekte_im_Eichsfeld#Untereichsfelder Mundart. Here it is mentioned as a word example "Fütze/Pfütze". 115.188.162.252 (talk) 07:59, 13 September 2024 (UTC)