I see that the MacMillan Open Dictionary thinks Zugzwang has entered the (non-chess) English language:
The Spanish debt-drama shows that Europe is in Zugzwang – a situation in chess when there is no useful move – every possible move will make the situation worse.
(Submitted from United Kingdom)
What do people think? I find this claim highly dubious. The writer, Laine Redpath Cole, also seems to suffer from the ‘the Germans have a word for it but we don’t’ disease.
Zugzwang is used in English as a chess word. It comes from German, and in German it’s used both as a chess word and in a figurative sense. But the example ‘submitted from United Kingdom’ above explains the word in attempting to introduce it.
It looks to me like the work of a translator from German who didn’t know what to do. And it comes up with reference to the EU.
Via Lisa John
A word isn’t very attested if the alleged attestation feels compelled to gloss it.
You put it so much more elegantly than I did.
Heavens, it’s turning up everywhere – Iran, China, [url]http://www.edaily.co.kr/news/NewsRead.edy?DCD=A00303&SCD=DD21&newsid=01876166599559752[/url] – and the Spanish pronunciation will be absolutely divine!
Its application puzzles me. I thought the general complaint was that some people were doing all the moving and others none, so the Zwang bit seems to be missing.
It will be forever linked to Spain.
Does it work in Hanyul?
People don’t like using BBCode, do they?