chess set
- noun
- /tʃɛs sɛt/
- Between them was a table made out of driftwood, and on top of the table was the most beautiful chess set Marie had ever seen.
- carved chess set
- ivory chess set
- marble chess set
Examples
-
It's a chess set.
-
On the Cuesta de Gomerez, he found a small woodworking shop and bought a small hand-carved chess set, with a box for the pieces that was lined with green velvet inside and opened up for playing.
Fiction book (1993) -
Oh, a pocket chess set.
-
Jeremy had a chess set.
-
One year, when his parents had given him a chess set for his birthday, he went through a phase of playing that lasted several months.
Fiction book (2000) -
I didn't exactly have a solid gold chess set in Finchley, did I?
-
From the time he had received his first chess set, a Christmas gift from his mother's employer when he was ten, he had been fascinated with the game and intrigued by the ways it paralleled life.
Fiction book (2000) -
He won the tournament using his new chess set that he had purchased last week.
-
My grandfather gifted me a beautiful chess set made of polished wood and carved pieces.
-
During the rainy afternoon, they set up a chess set on the dining table to play a few games.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly and compositionally formed from 'chess' (the game) + 'set' (a group of related items), so a learner who knows both words can infer this is the complete collection of items used for chess. This noun–noun compound follows a common cross-linguistic pattern and is fully predictable for a B1 learner.
Etymology
Chess set comes from the game chess and the word set, which means a 'group' of things kept or sold together. Imagine a box with a board and the 32 pieces ready to play; because they come as one group, chess set now means the board plus all the pieces.