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| Classic gams Mitzi Gaynor |
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| Mary Tyler Moore |
This plural noun refers to human legs, especially related to the shapeliness of a woman's leg, and appears in the late 18th century. It was probably a variant of the heraldic term gamb, which represented something closer to an animal's leg and may have come from Old Northern French gambe which did mean "leg."
Seemingly unrelated is a rare use of gam to mean in American English usage of the mid-19th century for a social meeting or informal conversation that was originally related to whalers at sea.
I took a guess that gam might be connected to gambit. That word's origin is uncertain but might be from the dialect gam meaning a "game." Dictionaries also mention it may be a shortened form of "gammon" So then I look that up. It can mean in Britain a side of bacon and more recently is used as an insult - which seem irrelevant. But it can also mean the winning of a backgammon game before the loser removes any men from the board.
I only knew "gambit" as meaning an action, or opening remark, usually a bit risky in the effort to gain an advantage. You hear it used in the game of chess, as when someone makes an opening move in which they sacrifice a piece to get a possible advantage later.
This tenuous connection to everything I've written above gets a bit closer when you see that the origin (mid-17th century Italian) from an earlier gambett, from Italian gambetto, which literally means "tripping up," comes from gamba meaning - once again - "leg." Full circle.
Did you watch the Netflix series, The Queen's Gambit, or read the book?
And finally, we have gamble which everyone knows means taking a risky chance, most often on a game. This word from the early 18th century comes from the obsolete verb gamel "to play games."
