gambito

Forms

gambito m (plural gambitos)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Italian gambetto (“a trip, tripping someone up”), a diminutive of gamba (“leg”).^[2][3][4][1] The Italian noun is recorded from at least the 13th century in phrases meaning “to trip someone up”; its chess sense appears later, and the Spanish record of 1561 is older than the Italian one.^[3] The same Italian word gave French gambit, recorded in 1743.^[4]

The Italian word for “leg” continues Late Latin gamba (“hoof, leg of a horse”), which was taken from Ancient Greek καμπή (kampḗ, “bend, joint”) as a term of veterinarians and horse breeders and later replaced Latin crūs as the word for the human leg.^[5][6][1] The Greek noun is a derivative of κάμπτω (kámptō, “to bend”), and Wiktionary traces it to Proto-Indo-European *kh₂emp-.^[1][7] The Latin word is also the source of French jambe, Catalan camba and Old Spanish camba or cama;^[8] Nocentini takes the forms with ⟨c⟩ as the trace of a Vulgar Latin variant closer to the Greek.^[5][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The DHLE's first record is the chess term in Ruy López de Segura's Libro de la invención liberal y arte del juego del axedrez of 1561, a treatise modelled on Damiano's Italian manual of 1512, which lacks the word.^[3] The first Italian record is the 1584 translation of López's own treatise, but López himself points to the Italian origin of the term.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Salvá's dictionary of 1846 has it as “a certain move in chess”, and the Academy entered it in 1899, with the etymology from Italian, as a move that gives mate in the first moves of the game.^[9][10][4] The DHLE puts its first dictionary record in Capmany's French–Spanish dictionary of 1805 and links the growth in its use to the popularity of chess from the 19th century on.^[3] Today's definition is the sacrifice of a pawn or another piece at the start of a game to gain a better position.^[2][11]

By metaphor it came to mean any plan or stratagem meant to win an advantage, first recorded in 1891 in letters that K. Lendas (Arturo Cuyás Armengol) sent to the Diario de la Marina of Havana; this sense is now common in political journalism.^[3] Argentine texts of the 1940s use it in this way.^[12]

Timeline

• 1561 – first record, as a chess term, in Ruy López de Segura's treatise on chess.^[3]
• 1584 – the Italian translation of López's treatise is the first Italian record of the chess sense.^[3]
• 1743 – gambit is recorded in French.^[4]
• 1805 – first in a dictionary, Capmany's French–Spanish dictionary.^[3]
• 1846 – Salvá defines it as a certain move in chess.^[9]
• 1886 – Eduardo Acevedo Díaz uses it in the novel Brenda (Uruguay).^[13]
• 1891 – first record of the sense “stratagem”, in the Diario de la Marina of Havana.^[3]
• 1899 – the Academy's dictionary enters it, with the etymology from Italian.^[10][4]

Meanings

Noun

1. (chess) A gambit: an opening in which a pawn or another piece is sacrificed to gain a favourable position: Sorprendió a su rival con un gambito de rey.^[2][11][1]
2. (figurative) A plan or stratagem meant to gain an advantage.^[3]

Related words

• gamba
• gambeta
• jamón
• Italian gambetto
• French gambit

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. gambito
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Real Academia Española (2013–), Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (DHLE), https://www.rae.es/dhle, p. s.v. gambito
4. ^ a b c d e Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. gamba
5. ^ a b Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier, p. s.v. gàmba
6. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. s.v. gambito
7. ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ a b Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá, p. 543
10. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 484
11. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. gambito
12. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. gambito
13. ^ Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. gambito