A gambit (from Italian gambetto, the act of tripping someone with the leg to make them fall) is a chess opening in which a player sacrifices material with the aim of achieving a subsequent positional advantage.
The Spanish word gambito was originally applied to chess openings in 1561 by Ruy López de Segura, from an Italian expression dare il gambetto (to put a leg forward in order to trip someone).
In English, the word first appeared in Francis Beale's 1656 translation of a Gioachino Greco manuscript, The Royall Game of Chesse-play ("illustrated with almost one hundred Gambetts"[2]).
The Spanish gambito led to French gambit, which has influenced the English spelling of the word.
The metaphorical sense of the word as "opening move meant to gain advantage" was first recorded in English in 1855.