Close to Home Comic Strip, September 24, 2012 on GoComics.com

runar said, 8 months ago

That’s gantlet.

Notsoastute said, 8 months ago

@runar

What has the railroad got to do with a rest home?
Unless they were railroaded by their kids into living there. ; )

Perkycat said, 8 months ago

Gauntlet is correct in this instance. But, you sent me to the dictionary to figure out what railroad had to do with anything – looked up gantlet. I learn so much reading the comics!

comicnut4636 said, 8 months ago

@Perkycat

So, I’m not the only person who looks up words in a dictionary??
( Printed version )

Penny Robinson Fan Club said, 8 months ago

Er, no. Fail again, Captain Troll.
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/run-the-gauntlet.html
That phrase is first recorded in Hall’s Chronicles of Richard III, 1548:

“Makynge a proclamacion, that whosoeuer would saie that kynge Richard was not lawefully kynge, he woulde fighte with hym at the vtteraunce, and threwe downe his gauntlet.”

The name of the brutal punishment was originally ‘running the gantelope’. Gantlope is an Anglicized form of the Swedish word ‘gatlop’, or ‘gatu-lop’, which refers to the gate of soldiers that the victim had to pass through. The Ist Earl of Shaftsbury recorded the phrase in his Diary, 1646:

“Three were condemned to die, two to run the gantelope.”

It didn’t take long for gantlope to migrate into ganlet, or gauntlet – possibly as a result of a simple muddle over the similar-sounding words or possibly because of the association with the use of gauntlets as weapons and with the antagonism implicit in ‘throwing down the gauntlet’.

The earliest known record of the gantlet form of the phrase is in Joseph Glanvill’s The vanity of dogmatizing, or confidence in opinions etc., 1661:

“To print, is to run the gantlet, and to expose ones self to the tongues strapado.”