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Don’t let the similarities of sound and general flavor between gambit and gamble trip you up; the two words are unrelated. Gambit first appeared in English in a 1656 chess handbook that was said to feature almost a hundred illustrated gambetts. Gambett traces back first to the Spanish word gambito, and before that to the Italian gambetto, from gamba meaning “leg.” Gambetto referred to the act of tripping someone, as in wrestling, in order to gain an advantage. In chess, gambit (or gambett, as it was once spelled) originally referred to a chess opening whereby the bishop’s pawn is intentionally sacrificed—or tripped—to gain an advantage in position. Gambit is now applied to many other chess openings, but after being pinned down for years, it also finally broke free of chess’s hold and is used generally to refer to any “move,” whether literal or rhetorical, done to get a leg up, so to speak. While such moves can be risky, gambit is not synonymous with gamble, which likely comes from Old English gamen, meaning “amusement, jest, pastime”—source too of game.
Examples of gambit in a Sentence
Peter Tonguette, The Washington Examiner, 13 Mar. 2026
Details of Xi’s gambit for the future were approved on Thursday by China’s rubber-stamp legislature in Beijing as the week-long annual assembly drew to a close.
—John Liu, CNN Money, 12 Mar. 2026
Dawson instead showed up at Cubs’ spring training in ’87 and made the most famous gambit in free agent history — offering the team a blank contract to sign him.
—Paul Sullivan, Chicago Tribune, 11 Mar. 2026
But there is good reason to think that this time, his gambits may fail.
—Yair Rosenberg, The Atlantic, 11 Mar. 2026
See All Example Sentences for gambit
Cite this Entry
“Gambit.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gambit. Accessed 16 Mar. 2026.
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