Verb (used with object) : Sorrow and joy have checkered his life.    From Dictionary.com. 

"What you might call a chequered career," he commented.    From Wordnik.com.  [Rat Race]

It has what people fearful of causing offence might call a chequered history.    From Wordnik.com.  [Irish Blogs] Reference

Nodding in chequered sunshine of the trees.    From Wordnik.com.  [April 2007] Reference

Pardew said: I have had a kind of chequered career with that club.    From Wordnik.com.  [Evening Standard - Home] Reference

These were laid in rows upon the "chequered" cloth which covered the table.    From Wordnik.com.  [An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800] Reference

Seldom would the term "chequered" more graphically describe a political career.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Statesman] Reference

Maya said she was 35 when she was appointed to the bench, after a "chequered" career.    From Wordnik.com.  [News24 Top Stories] Reference

The official F1 logo is featured on the engines and motor racing's famous 'chequered' flag is on the tail fin.    From Wordnik.com.  [AME Info Latest News] Reference

Nor was "chequered" confined to square divisions, as it usually is now, but included spots of any size or shape.    From Wordnik.com.  [The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare] Reference

The official F1 ™ logo is featured on the engines and motor racing's famous 'chequered' flag is on the tail fin.    From Wordnik.com. Reference

The Mid-Wales like the Cambrian, had had a chequered early career.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Story of the Cambrian A Biography of a Railway] Reference

Thus clearly it has a place in the chequered history of Aphrodite.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Evolution of the Dragon] Reference

Pocket instruments in a crimson chequered covering, with a silver clasp.    From Wordnik.com.  [Drug Supplies in the American Revolution] Reference

The result was that Barnes ended his chequered career at the stake, as did others.    From Wordnik.com.  [Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Paul An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch] Reference

I see her looking back over her chequered life, and pining to know her birthright.    From Wordnik.com.  [An Outcast or, Virtue and Faith] Reference

The two storeys of which it consists are divided externally by a band of chequered diaper.    From Wordnik.com.  [Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield A Short History of the Foundation and a Description of the Fabric and also of the Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Less] Reference

They had in them twelve long, chequered windows which reached from the ceiling to the floor.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Book of Stories for the Story-teller] Reference

And instead of making the sky blue as it really was, they made it a chequered pattern of gold.    From Wordnik.com.  [Knights of Art; stories of the Italian painters] Reference

His career was both chequered and curious, sufficiently so, indeed, to cause our eminent novelist.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Violin Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators] Reference

Melissa, will we pass our days in all that felicity of mind which the chequered scenes of life admit.    From Wordnik.com.  [Alonzo and Melissa The Unfeeling Father] Reference

There were none of those chequered ques, none of those warring emotions, in which Biography delights.    From Wordnik.com.  [The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II] Reference

The long vista of pavement became chequered like a chessboard, with patches of light from shop windows.    From Wordnik.com.  [Young Mr. Barter's Repentance From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray] Reference

Vistas of shapely diamond-chequered trunks stretched away in every direction, in long and shady perspective.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Island Home] Reference

"You know, I went to a fair number of wild parties at East Coast fleshpots in my chequered youth," I said to him.    From Wordnik.com.  [Summer Party Advice, From Father to Son] Reference

Yunnan's chequered history is revealed in the varied peoples that inhabit the deep valleys and narrow river banks.    From Wordnik.com.  [A Wayfarer in China Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia] Reference

Through chequered fortunes, through many perilous ways, we steer for Latium, where destiny points us a quiet home.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Aeneid of Virgil] Reference

“You know, I went to a fair number of wild parties at East Coast fleshpots in my chequered youth,” I said to him.    From Wordnik.com.  [Summer Party Advice, From Father to Son] Reference

He had never spoken of his occupation, or I of my restless ambitions -- chess players never go far beyond the chequered board.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 An Illustrated Monthly] Reference

Ever since the second century before our era, it could not help but find adepts in the chequered multitude of slaves and freedmen.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism] Reference

A bold mountain landscape is chequered by innumerable rivulets abounding in fish, and watering a soil rich in luxurious vegetation.    From Wordnik.com.  [South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum of 9th Oct. 1899] Reference

They were traversing an open, breezy country, chequered with wooded hollows, where generally a village sought shelter from the winds.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Daughters of Danaus] Reference

It was in such an atmosphere and amid such surroundings, however, that the dawn of a new era sent its beams across his chequered pathway.    From Wordnik.com.  [From Slave to College President Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington] Reference

The twilight was beginning to fall, and with its advancing shadows came trooping before my tearful eyes all the various episodes of my chequered life.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Doctor's Daughter] Reference

  Walcott withdrew from consideration as a result of an anonymous letter-writing campaign that revived the story of his chequered past, and Padel got the job.    From Wordnik.com.  [When Will the Poetic Violence End?] Reference

After a chequered career, in which he figured at the Old Bailey, killed at Waterloo, "gloriously leading his division," said Wellington, "to a charge of bayonets.".    From Wordnik.com.  [Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Paul An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch] Reference

A new idea seized the young prince, and taking up one of the golden jars he went to the window and struck on one of its chequered panes of glass with all his force.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Book of Stories for the Story-teller] Reference

The coast is also chequered with a variety of fine islands, around which the sea flows, and opens excellent channels, for the easy conveyance of produce to the market.    From Wordnik.com.  [An Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the Colonies of South Carolina and Georgia, Volume 1] Reference