Gambit

Word of the Day for Sunday, May 20, 2012

gambit \GAM-bit\, noun:

1. A remark made to open or redirect a conversation.
2. Chess. An opening in which a player seeks to obtain some advantage by sacrificing a pawn or piece.
3. Any manoeuvre by which one seeks to gain an advantage 

The leader was eyeing him up and down, shrewdly calculating. "Thirsty as all that, are you, my friend?" he asked. Gratefully Bomilcar seized upon the gambit. “Thirsty enough to buy everyone here a drink,” he said.
-- Colleen McCullough, The First Man in Rome

But in other cases the gambit may be a dependent clause introducing or rounding off some larger unit whose illocutionary force it helps to establish.
-- Thierry Fontenelle, Practical Lexicography: A Reader

Gambit is primarily a term used in chess. It came from the Italian idiom gambetto meaning "to trip up."

Thanks to: http://www.dictionary.com/