- present participle of gamble.
gambling
Americannoun
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the activity or practice of playing at a game of chance for money or other stakes.
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the act or practice of risking the loss of something important by taking a chance or acting recklessly.
If you don't back up your data, that's gambling.
Etymology
Origin of gambling
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Flaherty that prediction-market contracts are “swaps” under the Commodity Exchange Act, and that therefore federal law pre-empts state gambling statutes from reaching these markets.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 21, 2026
“Nothing about these contracts is an investment. Nothing about them is a rational hedge for a financial position. They are pure and simple gambling vehicles running through a U.S. government-regulated exchange,” he said.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 18, 2026
In the words of Damon Runyon, the bard of gambling lowlifes, “Mr. Bert Bell does not get out of bed in time for daylight games.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 13, 2026
"It doesn't always feel like movements are driven by rational reasons - sometimes it still feels a lot like gambling," he says.
From BBC ● Aug. 13, 2026
Also, Handlon had assigned a detective to help Nye “case the pawnbrokers”; as he said, there was “always a pack of them in any gambling town.”
From "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
