Candidate Master. An interim title, I believe, for someone who has partially achieved the necessary norms.
What do the Titles Mean?
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Wikipedia has a breakdown of FIDE title and their requirements. Better than I could regurgitate.
Nov 3, 2009
0
#5
Candidate master, FIDE 2200+ and you're ready to apply for the title. Few people do, however, since it isn't considered respectable among pros.
Some countries also have their own national requirements for becoming a candidate master.
Thanks everyone. Very helpful.
kingscrusher is a CM
Oct 2, 2016
0
#9
"Candidate master, FIDE 2200+ and you're ready to apply for the title. Few people do, however, since it isn't considered respectable among pros."
If that's true then it's quite petty on such pros' parts -- and frankly it's being foolish. Pros who don't respect others' accomplishments have ego problems and should be completely ignored.
On the other hand, a *legitimate* reason for not applying for a title is if your competition norms could be applied for a higher title that you feel confident you can get. A friend of mine's son is earning norms that he can put towards either FM or IM but not both (that seems really odd to me but I don't make the rules 
). His son is foregoing FM and going straight for IM.
But other people's silly ego problems are no reason to forego striving for respectable accomplishment or title like CM or any other, be it in chess or any other respectable pursuit.
So I saw the title CM and hadn't ever seen that before. I searched the forums and found a nice breakdown of what those titles stand for, but what do they actually mean? Can anyone point me to a nice article explaining all of this. How does one become a CM, etc. Just curious. Not anything I'm planning or hoping to achieve!