Chess. [f. STALE sb.6 + MATE sb.1]
Strictly a misnomer, as the ‘stale’ (so called until 18th c.) is not really a mate.]
A position in which the player whose turn it is to move has no allowable move open to him, but has not his king in check.
According to modern rules, the game that ends in stalemate is drawn. In England from the 17th c. to the beginning of the 19th c. the player who received stalemate won the game. Various other rules have been in vogue at different times; sometimes the player giving stalemate won, either wholly or to the extent of half the stake; sometimes the last few moves had to be played over again until a mate resulted; sometimes the piece causing the obstruction was removed.
1765. Lambe, Hist. Chess, 91. When the King has no man whom he can play, and is not in check, yet is so blocked up, that he cannot move without going into check, this position is called a stale-mate, or Pat, in this case the King who is stale-mated wins the game.
1847. Staunton, Chess-Player’s Handbk., 33. He places the adverse King in the position … of stalemate.
b. fig.
1885. Times, 15 Dec., 5/1. He [the Prince] will not waive his claims to treat as the victor, nor consent to the stalemate of mutual evacuation proposed by Servia.
1912. Standard, 20 Sept., 6/4. So far as the public can see the match [between the two armies] ended in stalemate.
c. attrib.
1886. Contemp. Rev., Sept., 444. It would be disgraceful indeed if a great country like Russia should have run herself into such a stale-mate position.
1903. H. J. R. Murray, in Brit. Chess. Mag., 285. Several mediæval problems involve the condition that the one player forfeits his power of moving when his King is in a stalemate position.
