''gambit'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260822002005-00-⌔

gambit - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

gambit (plural gambits)

• (chess) An opening in chess in which material is sacrificed to gain an advantage.
  • ✤ Her clever gambit gave her an advantage.
• Any ploy or stratagem.
  • ✤ Their promise to lower taxes is clearly an election-year gambit.
  • ✤ The Red Holocaust is best interpreted in this light as the bitter fruit of an${}^{[sic]}$ utopian gambit that was socially misengineered into a dystopic nightmare by despots in humanitarian disguise.¹
  • ✤ An opening sequence, featuring a de-aged Ford playing a younger Indy, is a bold and nostalgic gambit, offering a glimpse of what you’ve missed.²
• A remark intended to open a conversation.

Verb

gambit (third-person singular simple present gambits, present participle gambiting, simple past and past participle gambited)

• (chess, transitive) To sacrifice (a pawn or minor piece) to gain an advantage.

Etymology

Borrowed from Italian gambetto (“act of tripping; gambit”), from gamba (“leg”) + -etto (diminutive suffix). First attested in 1656.³

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA: /ˈɡæmbɪt/
• Audio (US): 🔊
• Rhymes: -æmbɪt

Printed 2026-08-22.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

1. 2009, Steven Rosefielde, Red Holocaust, page 240: ↩

2. 2023 June 29, City AM, London, page 18, column 2: ↩

3. “gambit, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, launched 2000. ↩