Word.ws English Dictionary

martingale

martingale noun: a piece of harness used on a horse to keep it from raising its head above a desired point.

Noun

martingale (plural martingales)

  1. A piece of harness used on a horse to keep it from raising its head above a desired point.
    • I’ll be bound, Lady Ashton understands every machine for breaking in the human mind, and there are as many as there are cannon-bit, martingales, and cavessons for young colts.1819, Jedediah Cleishbotham [pseudonym; Walter Scott], Tales of My Landlord, Third Series. […], volume III (The Bride of Lammermoor), Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for Archibald Constable...
    Synonyms:
    tie-down
  2. A spar, or piece of rigging that strengthens the bowsprit.
  3. A stochastic process for which the conditional expectation of future values given the sequence of all prior values is equal to the current value.
    • If a gambler plays a fair game repeatedly, his payoff over time is a martingale.
  4. A strategy in which one doubles the stake after each loss.
  5. A strap attached to the sword handle, preventing a sword being dropped if disarmed.

Verb

martingale (third-person singular simple present martingales, present participle martingaling, simple past and past participle martingaled)

  1. (transitive) To employ the martingale strategy in gambling.
    • The Russians were both martingaling it—doubling their bets when they lost.2012, Frank Scoblete, Casino Conquest

martingale meaning in Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

martingale in Tamil

மாட்டின்கேல்வார்

martingale in Urdu

a martingale
زیربند zerband

martingale in Bengali

ঘোড়ার গলাবন্ধনী, জুয়ার কৌশল

Synonyms of martingale

Forms of martingale

Noun
pluralmartingales
alternative formmartingal
Verb
third-person singular presentmartingales
present participlemartingaling
past participlemartingaled
pastmartingaled

Origin of martingale

From Middle French martingale, from Occitan martegalo, feminine form of martegal, an inhabitant of Martigues, which is from Latin maritima. Possibly merged with Spanish almártaga. The meaning in gambling may come from an old usage of à la martingale to mean absurdly or foolishly.https://people.math.harvard.edu/~ctm/home/text/class/sem/html/home/notes/martingales/martingales.pdf

Words formed from martingale

Questions about martingale

What does martingale mean?
Martingale means a piece of harness used on a horse to keep it from raising its head above a desired point.
What is martingale in Tamil?
Martingale in Tamil is மாட்டின்கேல்வார். See Martingale meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is martingale?
Martingale can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of martingale?
The plural of martingale is martingales.

Words near martingale in the dictionary

  1. Martinezism
  2. Martinezist
  3. Martinezists
  4. marting
  5. martingal
  6. martingale
  7. martingaled
  8. martingales
  9. martingaling
  10. martingality
  11. martingals

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: martingale (page history and authors); martingale (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); زیربند (Urdu) (page history and authors); martingale (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “martingale.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/martingale. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.