Whether you're an avid chess player or just an occasional dabbler in the game, you've likely run across the term patzer (sometimes written as potzer), which means “an inept chess player, especially one who is oblivious to the caliber of his or her own incompetence.” The first recorded use of the noun dates back to 1948, yet despite this relatively recent neology, the word's exact origins have become obscured by the pall of time. Still, there are a few theories. According to a handful of lexicographers, patzer has its roots in the Yiddish putz (sometimes transliterated into English as puts or pots), a noun generally used to mean “a foolish or useless person” but sometimes used more colloquially as a vulgar slang for penis. Most other lexicographers and etymologists reject this origin story, however, pointing out that putz didn't pass into the English lexicon until the mid-1960s, nearly twenty years after patzer was coined. They instead believe the chess term was borrowed from the German Patzer, a noun meaning “blunder” or “slip-up” that is itself a derivative of the German verb patzen, which means “to bungle” or “to botch.”
©2020 Michael R. Gates
