ppl. a. [f. CHEQUER sb. and v. + -ED; answering to OF. eschequeré, eschekeré, in sense 1, esp. in Her.]
1. Marked like a chess-board; hence, having a pattern of various colors in more or less geometrical arrangement.
1486. Bk. St. Albans, Her., F j. They be calde armys chekkerit when they ar made of ij colouris to the maner of a chekker.
c. 1530. Ld. Berners, Arth. Lyt. Bryt. (1814), 497. The baner of Britaine wyth the chekered armes.
1654. Gayton, Festiv. Notes, 97. He had the better of the whites in this checquer’d board; now have-at the blacks.
1674. Lond. Gaz., No. 901/4. Lost … a Green Checkerd Night-Bag.
1762. Falconer, Shipwr., III. 230. And checquer’d marble pav’d the hallow’d floors.
1779. Forrest, Voy. N. Guinea, 170. Checkered cloths.
1814. Scott, Ld. of Isles, I. xxx. His chequer’d plaid.
1836. Kingsley, Lett. (1878), I. 33. She looked on the quiet face of the evening sky through the chequered lattice-work of the dark leaves.
2. Diversified in color, variegated; marked with alternate light and shade.
1592. Greene, Upst. Courtier, 1. The checkerd (Paunsie) or party coloured Harts ease.
1632. Milton, L’Allegro. Dancing in the Chequer’d shade.
1704. Pope, Windsor For., 17. Here waving groves a checquer’d scene display, And part admit, and part exclude the day.
1730. Thomson, Autumn, 457. And mark his [the stag’s] beauteous chequered sides with gore.
1795. Southey, Joan of Arc, VII. 440. Beneath the o’er-arching forests’ chequer’d shade.
3. Diversified in character; full of constant alternation (esp. for the worse).
1656. M. Ben Israel, Vind. Judæorum, in Phenix (1708), II. 423. The chequer’d and interwoven Vicissitudes and Turns of things here below.
1711. Swift, Lett. (1767), III. 239. Our weather, for this fortnight past, is chequered, a fair and a rainy day.
1796–7. Instr. & Reg. Cavalry (1803), 252. All manœuvres of a corps retiring … must be more or less accomplished by checquered movements: one body by its numbers, or position, facing and protecting the retreat of another.
1808. Scott, Marm., III. Introd. Life’s chequered scene of joy and sorrow.
1887. Stevenson, Underwoods, I. xii. 24. The chequered silence.
