Checkpoint

How to spell checkpoint

10 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce checkpoint

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does checkpoint mean?

1. nounA place, often on a road or border, where people or vehicles are stopped and inspected.
2. nounA saved snapshot of a program or game that allows progress to be resumed from that exact spot.

Checkpoint in a sentence

• The soldiers waved each lorry through the checkpoint after a quick search.

• The game reloaded from the last checkpoint after my character died.

• We had to show our passports at the border checkpoint.

• The database creates a checkpoint every hour so nothing is lost in a crash.

Where does checkpoint come from?

Language of origin: French

This is a relatively modern compound, formed in English by joining 'check' and 'point'. The element 'check' arrived through Old French eschec, from the medieval cry used in chess when a king was threatened, which itself traces back through Arabic and ultimately Persian shah, meaning 'king'; over the centuries 'check' broadened from the chess sense into the idea of stopping, restraining, and then verifying or inspecting. 'Point' comes from the Latin punctum, meaning 'a pricked spot' or 'small place', from pungere 'to prick'. Put together, a checkpoint is literally a place where things are stopped and inspected. The term took off in the twentieth century with the rise of motoring, military operations, and border control, and it later spread to computing, where a checkpoint is a saved snapshot of progress.

How the word is built

• check (to verify or examine)
• point (a place or spot)