Checkmate is term used in Chess. It is from the Farsi language which is spoken in Iran and Afghanistan.

The original phrase is SHAH-K-MATE which means “The King is Dead”. SHAH means king. In Iran, even today, the ruler is known as ‘SHAH’. MATE means murder from the spanish word ‘matador’ meaning killer.

The word came through the French thereby losing the SH and taking on CH and became English where the two syllable MA-TE became the one syllable MATE to give the word CHECKMATE.

When CHECKMATE happens, the king gets mated and literally gets trapped and symbolically gets killed. Anyway, that is the core objective of Chess : Trap and Kill the opposition King!