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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
Joseph Ax, USA Today, 21 Aug. 2025
The man responsible for this gambit was Robert Thomas, a biologist at New Orleans’s Loyola University and the former director of the Louisiana Nature Center.
—Nathaniel Rich, Harpers Magazine, 20 Aug. 2025
Suffice it to say that Iris’s gambit is the kind of move that can focus a man’s attention, especially after the first 12 hours or so of confinement.
—Graham Hillard, The Washington Examiner, 15 Aug. 2025
Republicans continue to cry foul, saying that Newsom's gambit for new maps is politically motivated.
—Oren Oppenheim, ABC News, 15 Aug. 2025
See All Example Sentences for gambit
Cite this Entry
“Gambit.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gambit. Accessed 28 Aug. 2025.
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