Tempo

Tempo is the Italian word for "time," itself descended from Latin tempus. In chess, it names the abstract unit represented by a single move — the idea that each turn is a discrete unit of playing "time," and that a player can gain or lose tempo relative to an ideal plan the same way one might gain or lose time in a schedule. The concept is central to opening theory in particular, where "gaining a tempo" — forcing an opponent into a move they would rather not play, effectively wasting their turn — is treated as a concrete, countable resource on par with material or positional advantages. The Italian origin fits a broader pattern: alongside fianchetto, tempo is one of several core strategic terms chess absorbed from Italian during the 16th- and 17th-century golden age of Italian chess theory and literature, when players and writers such as Giulio Cesare Polerio and Gioachino Greco shaped much of the game's early strategic vocabulary.