gambler
(ˈgæmblə(r))
[See gamble v.]
† a. In early use: A fraudulent gamester, a sharper, ‘rook.’ b. One who habitually plays for money, esp. for extravagantly high stakes (see the vb.).
| 1747 Gentl. Mag. 35 Composed of gamesters, commonly call'd gamblers, players, women of the town. 1755 Johnson, Gambler (a cant word, I suppose, for game or gamester), a knave whose practice it is to invite the unwary to game and cheat them. 1784 Cook's 3rd Voy. III. v. vii. 144 It is very remarkable that the people of these islands are great gamblers. They have a game very much like our draughts. 1827 Lytton Pelham xxv, You suppose him to be more a gambler than a gamester, viz., more acute than unlucky. 1838 De Morgan Ess. Probab. 102 A gambler (meaning a bold venturer, which the term commonly implies) ceases to be such when he makes his stakes bear a proper proportion to his capital. 1891 Daily News 12 May 4/7 These ingenious speculators, ‘these gamblers miscalled statesmen’, to quote Professor Tyndall's phrase. |