gauntlet.
Protective armor for the hands, formerly thrown down as a challenge to combat.
Meaning & usage
Protective armor for the hands, formerly thrown down as a challenge to combat.
A long glove covering the wrist.
A rope on which hammocks or clothes are hung for drying.
An eruption of pellagra on the hands.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English gauntelett, gantlett, a borrowing from Old French gantelet (“gauntlet worn by a knight in armor, a token of one's personality or person, and symbolizing a challenge”), diminutive of gant (“glove”), a borrowing from Frankish *want (“glove; mitten”) and reinforced by Medieval Latin wantus (“glove”) itself borrowed from the former, from Proto-Germanic *wantuz (“glove; mitten”). Cognate with Dutch want (“mitten; shroud”), German Low German Want (“shroud”), Danish vante (“mitten”), Swedish vante (“glove; mitten”), Faroese vøttur (“glove; mitten”).
Two parallel rows of attackers who strike at a criminal as punishment.
A simultaneous attack from two or more sides.
Any challenging, difficult, or painful ordeal, often one performed for atonement or punishment.
A fight against swarms of relatively minor enemies in the form of multiple waves, often but not always preceding a boss.
Overlapping parallel rail tracks; either to allowing passage through a narrow opening in each direction without switching, or to allow vehicles of a larger gauge to pass through a station without hitting the platforms.
Where this word comes from
Modified, under the influence of etymology 1, from gantlope, from Swedish gatlopp (“passageway”), from Old Swedish gata (“lane”) + lopp (“course”), from löpa (“to run”) ]
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.