Word History: The two words spelled gauntlet may share associations with medieval violence, but they have separate origins. The word gauntlet used in the idiom to throw down the gauntlet comes from the Old French word gantelet, a diminutive of gant, "glove." (The idiom makes reference to the medieval custom of throwing down a glove in challenging an adversary to combat.) 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," a word related to lope and leap. The Swedish word for this traditional form of punishment, in which two lines of people beat a person forced to run between them, probably became known to English speakers as a result of the Thirty Years' War. Sweden played a leading role in the coalition of Protestant countries that fought against Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, and at the end of the war, in 1648, the Swedish empire emerged as a great power of Europe. It was during this period of expanding Swedish influence that gatlopp entered English. It seems, however, that from the moment English speakers borrowed the word, they inserted an n into the pronunciation of gatlopp—in the earliest known attestation of the word in English, dating from 1646, it is spelled gantelope. The English word was then influenced by the spelling of the other gauntlet, "a protective glove," eventually leading to the identical spellings used today.