zugzwangs

Noun

zugzwang (countable and uncountable, plural zugzwangs or zugzwänge)

1. A situation in which a player is forced to make a disadvantageous move; a position where any legal move will worsen a player's situation.
   • In such a position his condition will get worse step by step until he is forced, by the necessity of making a move, to relax his hold on, or weaken, some key point, and his game collapses. A combination directed to bring about such a catastrophe is called by the Germans Zugzwang (compulsion to...1947, Aron Nimzovich, edited by Fred Reinfeld, My System: A Treatise on Chess, revised edition, New York: David McCay Company, Inc., →ISBN, page 36
2. (figuratively) A situation in which someone is forced to make a disadvantageous move.
   • An explanation for this phenomenon may be that speech acts that include instructions (e.g., a command or request) show a higher level of activity than speech acts of assertion; the ethnomethodological analysis of conversation speaks of conversational Zugzwänge:²⁴ a request, a question or a command...2002, Carl Friedrich Graumann, Werner Kallmeyer, editors, Perspective and Perspectivation in Discourse, page 174

See all 3 meanings of zugzwang