Gloves or punishment?

Today's words are examples of deficiencies in wikipedia entries. Search for gantlet on Wikipedia and you get gauntlet or gantlet, with meanings conflated (more on conflate in a future blog) into the one word with two spellings. I prefer to differentiate between the two words, two meanings, and two etymologies. They are not forms of the same word, but two distinctly different meanings usually attached to two distinct phrases.

Gauntlet comes from the days of knights, and suits of armor, and comes from Old French. Gantlet has a military history, but comes from the Swedish. There is enough similarity in the challenges each involves that it is understandable that they would get confused and used in each others' place. In fact, the misuse has happened to such a degree that they will likely both be accepted for each other soon (if not already). My dictionary already lists each as an alternative spelling for the other.

But to know the difference, while it may be pedantry (see last week's blogs) is still instructive. Both words are usually found in phrases that give a sense to their meaning.

To "run the gantlet" (no u) is a form of punishment (more common of yore in the military, now in fraternities) whereby soldiers would form two lines with a lane in between and the person being punished would have to run down the lane while soldiers pummeled them with fists, hands, or other objects (like clubs). While there is no indication that I could find that the practice originated in Sweden, the term is definitely Swedish, coming from two Swedish words: gata, meaning lane, and lopp, meaning run. It first came into English as gantelope, but after a couple of centuries evolved into gantlet. Its first written use dates to the diary of the 1st Earl of Shaftsbury in 1646.

To "throw down the gauntlet" (with u) goes back further, to the 1400s and the age of knights. It is the piece of armor that would cover the hand, like a metal glove. It comes from the Middle French words for glove (gant) and the diminutive suffix -ette. Apparently the way one knight would challenge another knight to a fight was by throwing his own gauntlet to the ground. If the challenged knight agreed to fight, he would "pick up the gauntlet", a phrase still used, though gauntlets have always and still are thrown down more than they're picked up. The first recorded use of the phrase "throw down the gauntlet" was in 1548, in Hall's "Chronicles of Richard III".

So, if you are looking for a challenge, try keeping the usages of gantlet and gauntlet distinct. And stay away from those clubbing Swedes...