grandmaster

nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #11,165 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: grandmasters

A grandmaster is the highest title a chess player can be awarded. Become a grandmaster, a young grandmaster, grandmaster level.

It is held for life and earned by three strong tournament results plus a rating threshold, and there are only a couple of thousand in the world. The youngest have been under thirteen. The title is also used by some martial arts and by orders of knighthood. Note that it is now usually written as one word.

Definitions of grandmaster

1noungrandmasterThe highest title a chess player can be awarded.B2+
“He played chess every day for years, hoping to become a grandmaster one day.”

grandmaster is a title.

Where it comes from

Grand plus master. The chess title was formalised by the international federation in 1950.

From grand + master.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Chess & Card Games

Practise this word

grandmaster in the wild

The great majority of grandmasters are men, but 44 women have been awarded the GM title as of 2025, out of a total of about 2000 grandmasters.
Grandmaster (chess)
There are also Grandmaster titles for composers and solvers of chess problems, awarded by the World Federation for Chess Composition (see List of grandmasters for chess composition).
Grandmaster (chess)
Some chess prodigies have progressed to become grandmasters or even World Chess Champions.
Chess prodigy
Beer-sheba in Israel is the city with the most chess grandmasters per capita in the world.
List of Jewish chess players
The Grandmaster is a 2013 martial arts drama film based on the life story of the Wing Chun grandmaster Ip Man.
The Grandmaster (film)

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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