zugzwang

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)A situation in which a player is forced to make a disadvantageous move; a position where any legal move will worsen a player's situation.

   “In such a position his condition will get worse step by step until he is forced, by the necessity of making a move, to relax his hold on, or weaken, some key point, and his game collapses. A combination directed to bring about such a catastrophe is called by the Germans Zugzwang (compulsion to move), and the player who succumbs under it is said to have got into Zugzwang.”

2. (countable, figuratively, uncountable)A situation in which someone is forced to make a disadvantageous move.

   “An explanation for this phenomenon may be that speech acts that include instructions (e.g., a command or request) show a higher level of activity than speech acts of assertion; the ethnomethodological analysis of conversation speaks of conversational Zugzwänge:²⁴ a request, a question or a command demands a reaction of the addressee.”

   “Here, too, it is Russia that, ironically, is in Zugzwang. Because the central rationale of Moscow's occupation of Crimea was the defense of supposedly threatened Russians, Putin and his minions must continue insisting that Ukraine's Russians are under threat and that their right are being systematically violated.”

   “not only is there a lack of good alternatives concerning some particular policy decisions, but the whole Russian system is moving towards a zugzwang.”

   “"In chess terms, Putin is not in a stalemate, he's in a zugzwang: He is forced to make further moves even if they worsen his position, precisely because he must keep selling his 'war of civilizations' concept to Russians," Leonid Bershidsky, the self-exiled Russian political analyst wrote in Bloomberg recently.”

verb

1. (transitive)To force (a player) into a situation where they must make a disadvantageous move.