Running the gauntlet

To run the gauntlet is to take part in a form of corporal punishment in which the party judged guilty is forced to run between two rows of soldiers who strike out and attack them.

The word originates from Swedish: gatlopp, from gata "lane" and lopp "course, running". It was borrowed into English in the 17th century, probably from English and Swedish soldiers fighting in the Protestant armies during the Thirty Years' War. The word in English was originally spelled gantelope or gantlope, but soon its pronunciation was influenced by the unrelated word gauntlet meaning an armored glove, which is from French: gantelet. The spelling changed with the pronunciation. Both senses of gauntlet had the variant spelling gantlet. The spelling gantlet is preferred for the punishment in American English usage guides by Bryan Garner and Robert Hartwell Fiske. American dictionaries list gantlet as a variant spelling of gauntlet, while British dictionaries additionally label it American.

Known as Xylokopia in Ancient Greece, used as a severe military punishment and Fustuarium (a Latin abstraction from the Latin fustis, a branch or rod) in the Roman military as a form of execution by cudgeling (clubbing).

It could also be applied to every tenth man of a whole unit as a mode of decimation.

A very similar military punishment found in later armies was known as "running the gauntlet". The condemned soldier was stripped to the waist and had to pass between a double row (hence also known as die Gasse, "the alley") of cudgeling or switching comrades. A subaltern walked in front of him with a blade to prevent him from running. The condemned might sometimes also be dragged through by a rope around the hands or prodded along by a pursuer.

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