Protective gloves with extended cuffs, especially armored ones worn by knights; or any challenges one must face.
From Old French gantelet, diminutive of gant (glove). The phrase 'throw down the gauntlet' originated from medieval combat challenges where knights literally threw their glove to provoke a duel.
The phrase 'throw down the gauntlet' is literally medieval—knights would challenge each other to duels by dropping an armored glove, and the tradition persists in our modern language.
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