Restraint

Etymonline dates restraint to the early fifteenth century in the form restreinte, from the Old French restreinte, the feminine past participle of restraindre, and traces the verb restrain to the mid fourteenth century from Old French restraindre or restreindre, meaning to press, push together, curb, bridle, bandage, from Latin restringere, to draw back tightly, tie back, confine, check. In chess the concept is Nimzowitsch's and its German name is Hemmung. The table of contents of Die Praxis meines Systems at nimzowitsch.net has a second part headed 2. Hemmung und Blockade, with sub-sections on restraining freeing pawn advances, restraining a central pawn mass, restraining a qualitative pawn mass, and restraint in cases of doubled-pawn complexes. Wikipedia's biography of Nimzowitsch gives the English formulation of the sequence as first restrain, then blockade and finally destroy, which it says is illustrated by his 1926 game against Paul Johner. No source fetched dates a first English use of restraint as a chess term or names whoever rendered Hemmung that way.

First documented: n.a. for the chess term in English; Nimzowitsch's Hemmung chapters appear in Die Praxis meines Systems — Aron Nimzowitsch, Die Praxis meines Systems, part 2 Hemmung und Blockade, as reproduced at nimzowitsch.net; the restrain-blockade-destroy formulation is reported by Wikipedia