Sacrifice

Sacrifice is a religious word first: late 13th century, from Old French sacrifise and Latin sacrificium, with the secular sense “a giving up of a desirable thing for the sake of something else” only from the 1590s. Edward Winter notes an oddity: the OED's chess citations for the word have nothing early, the oldest dating only from 1915, “whereas from Google Books it is immediately clear that the term had been in use centuries earlier.” Philidor's Analysis (English edition, 1777) already uses it naturally in endgame discussion — “he who has only the rook cannot be hindered sacrificing it for the two pawns” — and Sarratt's Treatise (1808) and Studies of Chess (1803) use it likewise. Steinitz's 1889 glossary shows it fully technical, defining the gambit as an opening “in which a player sacrifices a Pawn for the sake of obtaining an attack.”

First documented: 1777 — Philidor, Analysis of the Game of Chess (English ed., 1777)