gantlet
pronunciation
How to pronounce gantlet in British English:
UK ['gɔ:ntlɪt]
How to pronounce gantlet in American English:
US ['gɔntlɪt]
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- Noun:
- to offer or accept a challenge
- a glove of armored leather; protects the hand
- a glove with long sleeve
- the convergence of two parallel railroad tracks in a narrow place; the inner rails cross and run parallel and then diverge so a train remains on its own tracks at all times
- a form of punishment in which a person is forced to run between two lines of men facing each other and armed with clubs or whips to beat the victim
Word Origin
- gantlet (n.)
- "military punishment in which offender runs between rows of men who beat him in passing," 1640s, gantlope, gantelope, from Swedish gatlopp "passageway," from Old Swedish gata "lane" (see gate (n.)) + lopp "course," related to löpa "to run" (see leap (v.)). Probably borrowed by English soldiers during Thirty Years' War. By normal evolution the Modern English form would be *gatelope, but the current spelling (first attested 1660s, not fixed until mid-19c.) is from influence of gauntlet (n.1) "a glove," "there being some vague association with 'throwing down the gauntlet' in challenge" [Century Dictionary].
Example
- 1. To converge ( railroad tracks ) to form a gantlet .
- 2. Till the last girl had run their gantlet ;
- 3. While some recent graduates find success , many are worn down by a gantlet of challenges and disappointments .
- 4. Huawei is contemplating a public offering on wall street but has run into a gantlet of rhetoric from democrats and republicans that paints the company as something just slightly better than the arms manufacturer krupp at the height of nazi germany .
- 5. Atlanta ladies vehemently told their husbands that they did not care a rap what the yankees thought . But inwardly they felt that running an indian gantlet would be infinitely preferable to suffering the ordeal of yankee grins and not being able to tell the truth about their husbands .