Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Gantlet   Listen
noun
Gantlet  n.  A military punishment formerly in use, wherein the offender was made to run between two files of men facing one another, who struck him as he passed.
To run the gantlet, to suffer the punishment of the gantlet; hence, to go through the ordeal of severe criticism or controversy, or ill-treatment at many hands. "Winthrop ran the gantlet of daily slights." Note: Written also, but less properly, gauntlet.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Gantlet" Quotes from Famous Books



... excitement. If the unknown whom they looked on as some species of spy, had been wounded, it looked like a serious piece of business for the little party of explorers. He must have friends not far away, and after the gantlet of defiance had been thrown down by this shot, these men might lose all restraint and show that they were disposed to ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson

... nearly a quarter of an hour to get myself tolerably clean, and I could not have done that had I not used some grease that was upon the stand. At the end, however, I stepped back from the glass confident that with good luck I should run the gantlet safely. ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish

... bring out the meaning of sweet sounds. A drunken crew on a rolling vessel might have danced to the tune that Eugene Hautville fingered on his brother's fiddle that morning while his sister walked back and forth overhead, running the gantlet, as it were, of an agony which his masculine imagination could not compass, well tutored as it was by the lessons of ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... the seas had not changed that. A few shivered—not alone because they were thinly clad. He walked on, slowly, past other groups, turned the corner of West Street, where the groups were more numerous, while the number of those running the gantlet had increased. And he heard, twice or thrice, the word "Scab!" cried out menacingly. His eyes grew redder still as he spied a policeman standing idly in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... good people teaze me beyond bearing. My host seems to think it ill manners to leave me alone, and so he claps not only himself, but his old-fashioned wife, on my back. They talk of coming to sup with us too; and then, I suppose, we are to run the gantlet through all the rest of the family.—What have ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith

... plunge—on they dash Thro' the dread gantlet; Death gurgles in the gash Of furious-dealt saber-slash; Over them the volleys crash Thro' the trees like a whirlwind. They pass through the fire of death; Pant riders and steeds for breath; "Halt!" cried the Captain Then he looked up the hill; There on the summit still The "Third Company" ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... along the route that as soon as it was finished they could sell their horses to tow the boats, their grain and fodder to feed the horses, and their provisions for the passengers. On reflection he thought that if he took all that away from them he would have to run the gantlet again, and he could not afford to do that. There never was anything done with the plan until a few years ago, when Mr. Welch, president of the Camden and Amboy Railroad and Canal, invented exactly the same thing and ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various

... That town he must and would have. He might have marched past it and left it in the rear, though not without great loss and danger, for the pass was narrow and commanded by the guns of Guntz, and he would have had to run the gantlet of a hailstorm of iron balls. But he had no thought of passing it; his honor was involved. Guntz must be his and its insolent garrison punished, or how could Solyman the Magnificent ever hold up his head among monarchs and ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris

... leading to his train was closed behind him, Harley felt a mighty sense of relief. It seemed to him that he had run a gantlet not much inferior to that through which the Indians put the captive backwoodsmen, and the dark-red walls of the car rose before ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... danger from flood and fire so far escaped,—the gantlet of the pirates safely run,—the perils of the sea and the rail surmounted by the good Providence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... Miss Holland;" and he did not feel one shrinking thought again as he ran the gantlet of the idle fellows of the town, many of them his former vagrant playmates. Rhoda was perfectly happy. He would have taken her to his grandmother's, with whom he kept house, but that aristocratic old dowager might say something, he considered, ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... financial department. All new schemes, whether suggested by outsiders or initiated within the institution, go to Mr. Rogers. Regardless of their nature or character, he first takes them under advisement. If a scheme prove good enough to run the gantlet of Mr. Rogers' tremendously high standard, the promoter, after he has set forth his plans and estimates, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... unfold what is above all denominational disputes, he will be fortunate to escape accusations of transcendentalism, pantheism, spiritualism. If, lucky man, he go scot-free of such indictment, a last stunning stroke, in the gantlet he runs, will be sure to fetch him up, in the vague and unanswerable imputation of being very peculiar in his views. If he insist on the miracles as literal facts, he will be laughed at as old-fashioned in one pew; if he slight them, he will be mourned over as unsound ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... passed unhindered the ordeal of the wickets, had run the gantlet of those thousand eyes without lighting in any pair a spark of recognition, he began to bear himself with more assurance, to be sensible to a grateful glow of hope. Perhaps Hobbs' telegram had not reached its destination, for ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... President elected in a manner not employed in the choice of either branch of the legislature, serving for four years, and subject to removal only by the difficult process of impeachment. After a law had run the gantlet of both houses and the executive, it was subject to interpretation and annulment by the judiciary, appointed by the President with the consent of the Senate and serving for life. Thus it was made almost impossible for any ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... was as impassive as a mask shouldered through the mob and burdened himself with the hand-luggage of the party. Sally gathered that he was valet to Mr. Savage. And they were pushing through the gantlet of several hundred curious eyes and making toward the head of ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... without turning. "Sixteen-foot room inside. That's where the she-leopard and the cubs were smothered. Fired the gully to drive out the family. All stayed at home and got smothered 'cept old Mr. Leopard. He ran the gantlet. Lord, how he squalled, poor brute! But they'd have eaten us if we hadn't eaten them. He landed in the pool, too scorched to see. Settled him with ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet

... hills was equivalent to running the gantlet. From every ranch-gate men and boys issued, wall-eyed with curiosity. They, of course, knew nothing of the raiding-party of the morning, but they understood that something unusual had taken place, for was not the ranger's saddle ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland

... New England borders, where they surprised and burned farmhouses and small hamlets, killed men, women, and children without distinction, carried others prisoners to their village, subjected them to the torture of "running the gantlet," and compelled them to witness dances of triumph around the scalps ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... Chambre, Of Light; discoursed with this new Author after the same rate, as he had done before with Des-Cartes himself, and seemed to invite some-body of his friends, to re-assume the former contest. Whereupon M. Clerselier and M. Rohault took up the Gantlet, to assert the Doctrine of the deceased Philosopher, exchanging several Letters with M. Fermat, all inserted in this Tome, and serving fully to instruct the Reader of this Difference, and withal to elucidate many difficult points ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various



Words linked to "Gantlet" :   body armour, coat of mail, railroad track, railroad, gauntlet, glove, challenge, metal glove, suit of armor, cataphract, suit of armour



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com