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gambit - 5 dictionary results

gam⋅bit

  [gam-bit]
Use gambit in a Sentence
–noun
1. Chess. an opening in which a player seeks to obtain some advantage by sacrificing a pawn or piece.
2. any maneuver by which one seeks to gain an advantage.
3. a remark made to open or redirect a conversation.
Origin:
1650–60; < F < Sp gambito or It gambetto (akin to OF gambet, jambet), equiv. to gamb(a) leg + -etta -et

Synonyms:
2. ploy, stratagem, scheme, ruse.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
Cite This Source Link To gambit
gam·bit   (gām'bĭt)   
n.  
  1. An opening in chess in which a minor piece, or pieces, usually a pawn, is offered in exchange for a favorable position.
  2. A maneuver, stratagem, or ploy, especially one used at an initial stage.
  3. A remark intended to open a conversation.

[Ultimately from Spanish gambito, from Italian gambetto, act of tripping someone up in wrestling, from gamba, leg, from Old Italian; see gambol.]
Usage Note: Critics familiar with the nature of chess gambits have sometimes maintained that the word should not be used in an extended sense except to refer to maneuvers that involve a tactical sacrifice or loss for some advantage. But gambit is well established in the general sense of "maneuver" and in the related sense of "a remark intended to open a conversation," which usually carries no implication of sacrifice.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Gambit

Gam"bit\, n. [F. gambit, cf. It. gambitto gambit, a tripping up. See Gambol, n.] (Chess Playing) A mode of opening the game, in which a pawn is sacrificed to gain an attacking position.
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
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Language Translation for : gambit
Spanish: gambito,
German: das Gambit,
Japanese: 先手
More Translations »

gambit 
"chess opening in which a pawn is risked for advantage later," 1656, gambett, from It. gambetto, lit. "a tripping up" (as a trick in wrestling), from gamba "leg," from L.L. gamba (see gambol). Applied to chess openings in Sp. in 1561 by Ruy Lopez, who traced it to the It. word, but the form in Sp. was generally gambito which led to Fr. gambit, which has infl. the Eng. spelling of the word. Broader sense of "opening move meant to gain advantage" is first recorded in Eng. 1855.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
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Gambit language
A variant of Scheme R3.99 supporting the future construct of Multilisp by Marc Feeley . Implementation includes optimising compilers for Macintosh (with Toolbox and built-in editor) and Motorola 680x0 Unix systems and HP300, BBN GP100 and NeXT. Version 2.0 conforms to the IEEE Scheme standard.
Gambit used PVM as its intermediate language.
(ftp://acorn.cs.brandeis.edu/dist), (ftp://ftp.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/amiga/fish/f7/ff764/Gambit_Terp). (ftp://ftp.iro.umontreal.ca/pub/parallele/gambit/).
Mailing list: gambit@trex.umontreal.ca.
(1998-02-10)

The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2007 Denis Howe
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