[gant-lit, gawnt-] 
| 1. | Railroads. a track construction used in narrow places, in which two parallel tracks converge so that their inner rails cross, run parallel, and diverge again, thus allowing a train to remain on its own track at all times. |
| 2. | gauntlet 2 (defs. 1, 2, 4). |
| 3. | Railroads. to form or lay down as a gantlet: to gantlet tracks. |
[gawnt-lit, gahnt-] | 1. | a former punishment, chiefly military, in which the offender was made to run between two rows of men who struck at him with switches or weapons as he passed. |
| 2. | the two rows of men administering this punishment. |
| 3. | an attack from two or all sides. |
| 4. | trying conditions; an ordeal. |
| 5. | gantlet 1 (def. 1). |
| 6. | gantlet 1 (def. 3). |
| 7. | run the gauntlet, to suffer severe criticism or tribulation. |
| gant·let 1 (gônt'lĭt, gänt'-) n. A section of double railroad tracks formed by the temporary convergence of two parallel tracks in such a way that each set remains independent while traversing the same ground, affording passage at a narrow place without need of switching. tr.v. gant·let·ed, gant·let·ing, gant·lets To converge (railroad tracks) to form a gantlet. [Variant of gauntlet2.] |
| gant·let 2 (gônt'lĭt, gänt'-) n. Variant of gauntlet1. |
| gant·let 3 (gônt'lĭt, gänt'-) n. Variant of gauntlet2. |
| gaunt·let 1 also gant·let (gônt'lĭt, gänt'-) n.
[Middle English, from Old French gantelet, diminutive of gant, glove, from Frankish *want.] |
| gaunt·let 2 also gant·let (gônt'lĭt, gänt'-) n.
[Alteration (influenced by gauntlet1) of gantlope, from Swedish gatlopp : gata, lane (from Old Norse; see ghē- in Indo-European roots) + lopp, course, running (from Middle Low German lōp).] Word History: The spelling gauntlet is acceptable for both gauntlet meaning "glove" or "challenge" and gauntlet meaning "a form of punishment in which lines of men beat a person forced to run between them"; but this has not always been the case. The story of the gauntlet used in to throw down the gauntlet is linguistically unexciting: it comes from the Old French word gantelet, a diminutive of gant, "glove." From the time of its appearance in Middle English (in a work composed in 1449), the word has been spelled with an au as well as an a, still a possible spelling. But the gauntlet used in to run the gauntlet is an alteration of the earlier English form gantlope, which came from the Swedish word gatlopp, a compound of gata, "lane," and lopp, "course." The earliest recorded form of the English word, found in 1646, is gantelope, showing that alteration of the Swedish word had already occurred. The English word was then influenced by the spelling of the word gauntlet, "glove," and in 1676 we find the first recorded instance of the spelling gauntlet for this word, although gantelope is found as late as 1836. From then on spellings with au and a are both found, but the au seems to have won out. |
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