Patzer
/ˈpætsər/Slang for a weak or unskilled chess player, sometimes implying they are unaware of their own poor play.
The term is generally used informally and can be lightly derogatory; it is often paired with "woodpusher" and "fish" as roughly interchangeable insults for a poor player.
Etymology
Patzer most likely derives from German patzen, "to bungle," and the related noun Patzer, "bungler," a colloquial term in use in German since at least the 19th century, connected to a regional (Austrian) dialect word Patzen meaning "blot" or "stain." The word's exact path into English chess slang is genuinely uncertain, however: the Oxford English Dictionary notes that although the form "looks Yiddish," no equivalent Yiddish word actually exists, and Green's Dictionary of Slang goes further, suggesting patzer may instead derive from the English word "patsy" with the addition of the familiar "-er" agent suffix. Etymonline dates the first English use to 1948, describing "an incompetent chess player, especially one who doesn't know he is" — of, as the dictionary puts it, "uncertain origin." Chess forum research has since traced German-language uses of patzen specifically applied to chess bungling back even further, to Lasker's Chess Magazine in 1905, predating the English adoption by decades.
Translations
Translations for this term haven't been added yet.