En Prise

En prise is French for "in a position to be taken" or, more literally, "in taking." It is among the oldest surviving pieces of chess jargon in English, documented as far back as the mid-18th century: the Oxford English Dictionary cites Chess Made Easy (London, 1750) explaining that "when one piece can take another, that other is said to be in Prise of the first." Like j'adoube and en passant, en prise entered English directly from French rather than being translated, part of a cluster of procedural chess terms absorbed wholesale during the era when French dominated the vocabulary of European high-society games. An older custom, now obsolete, had players announce "gardez!" ("guard!" or "watch out!") when leaving their queen en prise as a point of etiquette — a warning convention that, unlike en prise itself, did not survive into modern practice.