Literal translation
to make a little leg (to trip someone)
Meaning
to trip someone up
Explanation
Cambeto denotes the jambette, the trip made by placing one's leg in front of someone else's to make them fall; gambeto is a spelling variant with a hard g, since c and g regularly alternate in Provençal vocabulary before back vowels. Faire gambeto or faire cambeto thus literally means to make the little leg, and the expression has kept this exact concrete sense of tripping someone up, with no notable figurative shift: it describes a children's game or a prank between friends, sometimes a dishonest move between adults. The word cambeto is also attested with the sense of hedge, pointing to an old kinship with the idea of an obstacle set on the ground, consistent with the gesture described. The register stays familiar and childlike, belonging to the vocabulary of games and squabbles, foreign to serious matters. Both spellings gambeto and cambeto occur depending on region and speaker, with no difference in meaning.