Origin of the word "Patzer"

This is a "feature" of young teenage men. They can't rebel in any real way, so they make up new slang periodically to show how independent and grown up they think they are. Ironically, when everybody around them starts using it, they sound like they are just trying desperately to fit in...

First it was "dude", then "bro", now "bruh"...it's all the same in the end: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bro_culture

15 years from now, they will all be making fun of the next overused word to come along, while forgetting they did the exact same thing.

I would like to know the origin of the term "woodpusher" thanks.

Woodpusher is slang for a new to intermediate player. The term means someone who pushes their pieces around without any understanding or strategy.

You won't find this in the dictionary, etc. but I also assign more specific context to the term, and I know others who do also...

A "woodpusher", for me, is a beginner who has been shown by somebody else or decided for themselves that it's a good strategy to push pawns in the opening and middle game, in order to create space and push the opponent's pieces around. The problem is that a woodpusher does this indiscriminately, and usually (a) ignores development, (b) weakens their own pawns, and (c) creates a lot of outposts for opposing pieces. They make themselves an easy mark, thus the disparaging term, not unlike "pawngrabber".

Isn't the word "Patzer" Yiddish?

I know the chess term "Kibbitzer" is.

yes. thank you. I know what the term means. I was more interested in the history of when it was first used. if it is just English slang or if it originates from a word in a different language?

I thought it was Yiddish, but it might not be.

A variant of the word "paper-pusher", perhaps?... a slang sneer at desk-bound bureaucrats.

Got it!

In German, "to bungle" (or to mess something up through stupidity or carelessness) is "patzen".

Blue Emu wins the thread!

There's no specific origin that I know of for "woodpusher". It may have evolved over time from lots of different sources, as many terms do.

No. The term was in common usage in the US in the mid-1970s when I began playing organized chess.

It was already in common usage in the '50s. I recall Fine using the term, and he quit tournament competition in 1945.

I am a big fan of Ruben Fine. Basic Chess Endings is the only endgame book that I have read and played through in its entirety.

Yeah... I still feel that Fine got ripped off when World War II started. His equal first at AVRO qualified him for a match against Botvinnik to determine the official challenger for the World Championship match against Alekhine... and Fine lost that priority when Alekhine died. He quit tournament play almost immediately after that.

I did not know that.

I think Paul Keres got a raw deal too.

Yes. Very much so. And... many years later... Shirov as well.

Here's what the OED gives for its etymology. Apparently, German, not Yiddish.

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Perhaps a borrowing from German.
Etymon: German Patzer.
Origin uncertain; perhaps < German (colloquial) Patzer inveterate bungler (19th cent.) < patzen to bungle (19th cent.; probably < German regional (Austria) Patzen blot, of uncertain origin) + ‑er ‑er suffix1.

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The OED gives the first known Englsih usage as 1948, but I wouldn't be shocked to hear it was common earlier. I would be a bit surprized if the lexicographers at the OED had access to a good library of the ephimeral chess literature of the early twentieth-century, let alone a knowlege of spoken chess conversation. And it seems likely the word has a much longer history in German, which would mean it's quite possible it was sometimes being picked up in multilingual chess conversations.

And sure enough, Google Books appears to turn up a usage from 1934, though I can't actually see it on the page to confirm.