Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use gamble in a sentence

40 example sentences · noun, verb

Gamble means a bet or wager. Example: “I had a gamble on the horses last weekend.”

Examples of gamble by meaning

nounA bet or wager.

  • I had a gamble on the horses last weekend.

nounA risky venture.

  • The sailors had taken many gambles with the sea and always won.

verbTo play risky games, especially casino games, for monetary gain.

  • Mark won half a million dollars gambling on horses.

verbTo risk (something) for potential gain.

  • He gambled his reputation on the outcome.

More sentences with gamble

  • I took a gamble on my girlfriends' parents not being home and turned up without warning.From the entry take a gamble
  • The robber took a gamble on the owners being away from home.From the entry away from home
  • My uncle gambled away his fortune, and now he hardly has a penny to his name.From the entry to one's name
  • He can gamble away his last penny for all I care.From the entry for all someone cares
  • Entrepreneurship is always more or less of a gamble.From the entry more or less
  • He really took a gamble when he left his job to become a writer. But it paid off in the end.From the entry take a gamble
  • When we gamble at poker, we play for keeps.From the entry for keeps
  • So all that being said, we are taking a gamble that sunlight is the best disinfectant.2025 April 11, Kevin Roose, Casey Newton, quoting Daniel Kokotajlo, “Big Tech’s Tariff Chaos + A.I. 2027 + Llama Drama”, in The New York…. From the entry sunlight is the best disinfectant
  • The show is a gamble on the part of Discovery and Mr.2009 July 21, Brian Stelter, “It’s Doomsday Once Again. Are We Having Fun Yet?”, in New York Times. From the entry postapocalypse
  • Mark also loved to gamble, and wanted nothing more than to elope to Vegas.2003, Jake Austen, A Friendly Game of Poker: 52 Takes on the Neighborhood Game, →ISBN. From the entry chest one's cards
  • They gambled with as much reckless abandon as they flew their airplanes.2002, W. Barry Baird, Vietnam Journey, →ISBN, page 171. From the entry buy the farm
  • They make just enough money to buy food, to gamble, and to occasionally mail something home.2002, Jorge Antonio Renaud, Behind the Walls, page 88. From the entry piddler
  • Two teen-age boys, after selling their personal belongings to play pachinko, sold their blood to "gamble.”1952 October 12, Ray Falk, “Pinball Panic Over Japan: ‘Pachinko’ is a zany game; its havoc is nation-wide”, in The New York Times, New…. From the entry pachinko
  • Drivelling back to the shanty at midday presented him with a distracting gamble over lunch.1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 122. From the entry drivel
  • He lied and gambled and he run wid de women and filled his heart wid proudfulness.1930, Roark Bradford, Ol' King David An' the Philistine Boys, page 178. From the entry proudfulness
  • Halmoni loved to smoke, drink, and gamble, and especially loved partaking in all three around a deck of hwatu.2021, Michelle Zauner, “Double Lid” (chapter 3), in Crying in H Mart, Pan Macmillan, →ISBN, page 29. From the entry hwatu
  • This isn’t merely a gamble on May’s part.2017 March 17, Martin Kettle, “We used to think Theresa May was a safe pair of hands. We can no longer say that”, in The Guardian. From the entry playbook
  • He'd taken a gamble, and sometimes you lost gambles.2012, Connie Willis, Larry Correia, Mercedes Lackey, A Cosmic Christmas. From the entry zipway
  • That's why this failure of the super committee represents a reckless, irresponsible gamble by our "leaders" in Washington.2011 November 21, David Gergen, “Have They Gone Nuts in Washington?”, in CNN. From the entry grievously
  • I'll always gamble, anytime, but he's taking so many angle shots at the table it's not even funny.2008 June 25, John Phan, “WSOP: Bracelet Winner Q and A”, in CardPlayer. From the entry angle shot
  • It's not like it's that hard for people to set up their own repositories; let them gamble with their own assets.2005 May 21, Michael K. Edwards, “Bug#310994: ITP: openttd -- open source clone of the Microprose game "Transport Tycoon Deluxe"”, in…. From the entry Napster
  • All this chanceyness is only part of the gamble.1951, Report of the State Apiarist for the Year Ending December 31, 1951, Des Moines, Ia., →OCLC, page 39. From the entry chanceyness
  • The moment is reminiscent of other bet-the-company gambles, such as when Netflix killed off its DVD-mailing business last decade to focus on streaming.2022 July 26, Mike Isaac, “‘Operating With Increased Intensity’: Zuckerberg Leads Meta Into Next Phase”, in The New York Times, →ISSN. From the entry kill off
  • The conservative movement's leadership isn't up to the challenge, and a good number of voters are willing to gamble on Trump's bluster.2016 January 21, R. R. Reno, “Conservatives against Trump”, in National Review, archived from the original on 29 Oct 2022. From the entry Trumpster diving
  • The town became what is called a "blowoff" town , where the soldiers would go to gamble, dance, drink, and carouse with women.1987, Philip Varney, New Mexico's Best Ghost Towns. From the entry blowoff
  • And I am not going to gamble half our resources on as crazy an effort as this, masterminded by a mouthful of planetless lunatics.1961, Galaxy Magazine - Volume 20, Issues 1-6, page 163. From the entry planetless
  • "I pray, when I play pharaoh at White's, that the cards fall as they have come to my hand in this large gamble," Anstis said.1945, Robert Hardy Andrews, Burning gold. From the entry pharaoh
  • If my boy is not tempted to gamble at a fashionable card party he will never learn from the degenerate, blackleg gamblers in the joint.1918, Alexander Corkey, The Vision of Joy, or When "Billy" Sunday Came to Town. From the entry degenerate
  • "'That's whatever!' assents this marshal gent, 'an' you can gamble a bloo stack that hangin' you is a bet we ain't none likely to overlook.1902, Alfred Lewis, Wolfville Nights. From the entry bloo
  • Appearing on live television is a gamble for a presidential candidate, or for any celebrity, without acting experience, but previous contenders have rolled the dice, including Mr.2024 November 2, Katie Rogers, Nicholas Nehamas, Haberman, “Kamala Harris Joins ‘S.N.L.’ for a Pep Talk With Maya Rudolph”, in The New…. From the entry roll the dice
  • As long as I have my eyes, I’ll use them.” He’s in danger and knows it, but he gambles on hard truth and it pays off.2017 July 23, Brandon Nowalk, “The great game begins with a bang on Game Of Thrones (newbies)”, in The Onion AV Club. From the entry hard truth
  • They were incensed that the claviger Bernat Mola not only slept in the church, but that by night he allowed “dishonest people and tricksters” in to gamble.2010, Ronald Stansbury, A Companion to Pastoral Care in the Late Middle Ages (1200-1500). From the entry claviger
  • It is a love gamble created by the fear that you may be settling for your current partner and you might be better off with someone else.2010, Sean Kenniff, “Your *Effing Love Life”, in Stop *Effing Yourself: A Survivor’s Guide to Life’s Biggest Screw-ups, Deerfield Beach…. From the entry relationshopping
  • Many voters said that while they liked Reform, they remembered having taken a flyer on Bob Rae and the NDP, a gamble they had come to regret.1997, Edward Greenspon, “Following the Trail of Campaign '97”, in Alan Frizzell, Jon H. Pammett, editors, The Canadian General Election of…. From the entry take a flyer
  • There were many speculative schemes which gambled on the expectation of an individual's life, as in the tontine system, whereby all the group's contributions went to the last survivor.1971, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Folio Society, published 2012, page 634. From the entry tontine
  • Perhaps she thought that by taking the huge gamble of misspeaking one more time about her narrow escape on the tarmac at Tuzla, she could compensate for misvoting on Iraq.2008 March 30, Frank Rich, “Hillary’s St. Patrick’s Day Massacre”, in New York Times. From the entry misvote

Meaning of gamble

  1. noun A bet or wager.
  2. noun A significant risk, undertaken with a potential gain.
  3. noun A risky venture.

Full definition of gamble

Questions about gamble in a sentence

How do you use gamble in a sentence?
Gamble is used as a noun and verb. For example: “I had a gamble on the horses last weekend.”
What is a short sentence with gamble?
“He gambled his reputation on the outcome.”
What does gamble mean?
Gamble means a bet or wager.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gamble (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this page: “How to use gamble in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/gamble. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.