GAMBLE

[verb] - to do something risky that might result in loss of money or failure, in the hope of making money or achieving successAnyone who gambles on the stock exchange has to be prepared to lose money. [I]In foreign policy, as in other spheres, the president has gambled outrageously during his two terms of office. [I]You're rather gambling on it being (= trusting that it will be) a nice day by holding the party in the garden, aren't you? [I]Further reductions in the armed forces, he said, would be 'gambling with the nation's defence'. [I]I'm gambling that he'll have forgotten what I promised last year. [+ that clause]You might gamble by betting money, for example in a game or on a horse race.When they played cards they always gambled. [I]When he gambled he always won, whether he was playing roulette, poker or just the fruit machines in Las Vegas. [I]He'd gambled away most of his inheritance by the time he was thirty. [M]