Word.ws English Dictionary

put the question to

put the question to verb: to threaten a piece (especially, to threaten a developed bishop by moving a pawn to the third or sixth rank), in such a way that it forces the opponent to make a deeper strategic decision whether to sacrifice the piece.

Verb

put the question to (third-person singular simple present puts the question to, present participle putting the question to, simple past and past participle put the question to)

  1. To threaten a piece (especially, to threaten a developed bishop by moving a pawn to the third or sixth rank), in such a way that it forces the opponent to make a deeper strategic decision whether to sacrifice the piece.
    • I put the question to the Rook, both to commit it away from the open d-file and to prevent c4-c5.1991 January/February, Selby Anderson, Texas Knights, volume 32, number 3, archived from the original on 23 Apr 2025, page 16
    • White can also put the question to the c4-pawn with 9.b3 before deciding about the capture a4xb51997, Angus Dunnington, Winning with the Catalan

Forms of put the question to

third-person singular presentputs the question to
present participleputting the question to
past participleput the question to
pastput the question to

Questions about put the question to

What does put the question to mean?
Put the question to means to threaten a piece (especially, to threaten a developed bishop by moving a pawn to the third or sixth rank), in such a way that it forces the opponent to make a deeper strategic decision whether to sacrifice the piece.
What part of speech is put the question to?
Put the question to is a verb.
What is the past tense of put the question to?
The past tense of put the question to is put the question to.

Words near put the question to in the dictionary

  1. put the moves on
  2. put the pedal to the medal
  3. put the pedal to the metal
  4. put the plug in the jug
  5. put the pot on
  6. put the question to
  7. put the record straight
  8. put the saddle on the right horse
  9. put the same shoe on every foot
  10. put the screw
  11. put the screws

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: put the question to (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: “put the question to.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/put_the_question_to. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.