Gauntlet (glove)

A gauntlet is a protective glove and a form of armour used to protect the wrist, the hand, fingers and forearms. Gauntlets exist in many forms ranging from flexible leather gloves and chainmail, to fully-articulated metal plates.

Historically, gauntlets were an important piece of armour, since the hands and arms were particularly vulnerable in hand-to-hand combat. With the rise of easily-reloadable firearms, hand-to-hand combat became less common and so gauntlets lost most of their strategic value.

Today, gauntlets are mostly used in contact sports, such as fencing. Gauntlets are also sometimes worn when defusing a bomb and by butchers.

The word gauntlet is also used by some manufacturers in the clothing industry to describe a special type of fingerless glove with one large opening rather than individual openings for each finger.

Kurokote is a term for a Japanese gauntlet which is bound by iron plates.