Chess in Italian

« Gambit » is one of the few English words that can be traced back to a leg. The Italian entry here, il gambetto, is the diminutive of la gamba, and away from the board it names something very concrete: dare il gambetto a qualcuno is to hook a foot round another person’s ankle and bring them down. The game took the image because the opening does exactly that — it hands over a pawn to trip the opponent into a position he has not chosen. From Italian the word travelled through Spanish and French before it reached English, and by the end the foot had gone: today « an opening gambit » is any first remark made to get a conversation moving, and « a clever gambit » is simply a manoeuvre. That drift is worth holding on to, because it runs one way only. Il gambetto offre materiale per guadagnare tempo is about pawns and nothing else, and an Italian speaker who wants the figurative sense reaches for una mossa or una trovata, never for un gambetto.