Word.ws English Dictionary

directmate

directmate noun: a kind of chess problem in which White, moving first, must checkmate Black within a specified number of moves against any defence.

Noun

directmate (plural directmates)

  1. A kind of chess problem in which White, moving first, must checkmate Black within a specified number of moves against any defence.
    • Problem 1’s stipulation of “Mate in 2” indicates that it’s a directmate and White must mate by the second move. […] Though not all directmates are successful in incorporating them, you should keep in mind the possibility of such counter-intuitive first moves.2024 December 21, Rocky64, “An introduction to composed chess problems”, in Chess.com, archived from the original on 13 Aug 2025

Forms of directmate

pluraldirectmates

Origin of directmate

From direct + mate.

Questions about directmate

What does directmate mean?
Directmate means a kind of chess problem in which White, moving first, must checkmate Black within a specified number of moves against any defence.
What part of speech is directmate?
Directmate is a noun.
What is the plural of directmate?
The plural of directmate is directmates.

Words near directmate in the dictionary

  1. directives
  2. directivities
  3. directivity
  4. directly
  5. directly proportional
  6. directmate
  7. directmates
  8. directness
  9. directnesses
  10. directoire
  11. Directoires

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: directmate (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “directmate.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/directmate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.