midgame

nounC1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — game sits at #201Too rare in one of the two pools to compare — fewer than 20 uses in speech or in writing

The midgame is the stage of a game after the pieces have been developed. Reach the midgame.

In chess it is where books stop helping and calculation starts. The midgame is usually decided by which side has better squares rather than more material.

Definitions of midgame

1nounmidgameThe stage after the pieces have been developed.C1
“He was fine in the opening and lost in the midgame every time.”

midgame is a stage.

Also accepted in games: middlegame

Where it comes from

Mid plus game, on the pattern of the older endgame.

Middle English
game
English
game
English, today
midgame

Built from

*mann- · Proto-Germanic — man

From mid + game. game comes from Middle English game. From Middle English game, gamen, gammen, from Old English gamen (“sport, joy, mirth, pastime, game, amusement, pleasure”), from Proto-West Germanic gaman, from Proto-Germanic gamaną (“amusement, pleasure, game", literally "participation, communion, people together”), from ga- + mann- (“man”); or alternatively from ga- + a root from Proto-Indo-European men- (“to think, have in mind”). Cognate with yol gaame, gaaume, gaume (“game”), Old Frisian game, gome (“joy, amusement, entertainment”), Dutch gemelijk (“cantankerous, crabbed”), Middle High German gamen (“joy, amusement, fun, pleasure”), Danish gammen (“merriment”), Icelandic -, Norwegian Nynorsk gaman (“joy, fun”), Swedish gamman (“mirth, rejoicing, merriment”). Related to gammon, gamble.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

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