(Sax. glō),** a covering for the hand, with a separate sheath for each finger.

Among our ancestors, to throw down the glove or gantlet was equivalent to a challenge to single combat; and the person thus defied signified his acceptance of the challenge by taking up the glove, and casting down his own; which ceremony was regarded as a mutual compact to meet at the time and place specified. This custom, according to Favy (Théâtre d'Honneur et de Chevalerie), was derived from the Oriental mode of contracting sales of land and the like by giving the purchaser a glove, by way of delivery or investiture; and to this effect he quotes the book of Ruth, iv. 7, in which passage the Chaldee paraphrase renders by glove the word commonly translated 'shoe.' He adds that the rabbin interpret similarly that passage in Psalm cviii—"over Edom will I cast out my shoe." It may be observed that in several of the modern European languages a glove is termed a hand-shoe.

The use of gloves is of high antiquity. There is reason to believe the ancient Persians wore them, since it is mentioned in the Cyropedia of Xenophon that on one occasion Cyrus went without his gloves; and we know they were used by the Greeks and Romans in certain kinds of manual labour. During the middle ages gloves were worn by ecclesiastical dignitaries and others as a mark of distinction; but as civilization advanced they gradually became common to all classes of the community.

The glove manufacture has long been an important branch of industry. The materials employed are very various, including the skin of the chamois, kid, lamb, beaver, doe, elk, and other animals, besides cotton, wool, silk, linen thread, &c. Glove-leather is prepared by curing the skins with alum, which renders them soft and pliable. Woodstock and Worcester, but particularly the former, are famed for the manufacture of kid-gloves of superior quality; and Dundee has long been celebrated for the excellence of its kid gloves. Those of France, however, still continue to maintain their superiority over the kid gloves of British make, and are very largely imported into this country. This also holds true of the ordinary French leather, the durability of which, combined with superiority of style and fitting, has occasioned the French boots and shoes to be preferred to those of British manufacture. Machinery is sometimes employed in sewing and pointing leather gloves, though only on a very limited scale in this country, almost the whole being made by the hand, and for the most part by females; but in Paris it is much used, and is said to have had the effect of reducing the price of gloves 30 per cent. below their former wholesale prices. Besides the English towns above mentioned, large quantities of leather gloves are produced in London, Yeovil, Ludlow, Leominster, and elsewhere. Limerick has long been famous for a very fine kind of ladies' leather gloves, known as chicken gloves. Until the year 1825 the importation of leather gloves and mits was prohibited, but since that time they have been admitted on payment of a certain duty. Large quantities of cotton gloves are made at Nottingham and Leicester. According to the census of 1851 the total number of persons employed in the glove manufacture in the kingdom was 32,982.