Talk:Running the gauntlet

Spelling

Not only have I (double-)checked my facts, but The Columbia Guide to Standard American English (1993) apparently has as well. See http://www.bartleby.com/68/8/2708.html . However, I have no intention of getting into an edit war over a single letter. You win, have the article anyway you like. ➥the Epopt 12:57, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

The word gauntlet is a corruption of a foreign word, borrowed into English several centuries ago, and appears in a whole number of different spellings, as such a word is liable to. The OED lists, alongside ga(u)ntlet, the variants gantloop, gauntlope, and gant(e)lope. Whether one form should be preferred over another, so as, for instance, to distinguish the punishment from the glove, may be debatable, but the form gantlet cannot be declared to be unequivocally correct and the others wrong.--Rallette 11:31, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I think the question is not over the spelling of the word ga(u)ntlet in and of itself, but rather the spelling in the context of the phrase. Using Running the gauntlet as the title of the article is to take something of a descriptivist/populist view that's probably not justified by most major reference books, whereas Running the gantlet is to take the elitist view that is probably not justified by common usage outside of academic circles. Similar things can be said for the phrase begging the question (except in that case the spelling is the same but the meaning is different) and anything else caught up in the prescriptivist/descriptivist crossfire. Incidentally, if you search the NY Times archives for "running the gantlet" vs. "running the gauntlet", they used the latter in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but they seem to exclusively use the former in recent times. Jun-Dai (talk) 15:39, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Suggestions

Move the article to gauntlet (disambiguation) or running the gauntlet as "fustuarium" is not a well-known word.

Explain "running the gauntlet" in its well-known (non-fatal) variations. Emphasize the distinction between the form of execution and the punishment which gives the person a chance of living.

Emphasize also the games or hazing rituals which are not intended to cause severe injuries. Uncle Ed 16:37, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Sources; article refactoring

It seems like this article violates the principle of least astonishment, in that's it's really about the phrase "running the gauntlet", not "fustuarium". Also, the references currently given are less than adequate for the current content:

• The Corpun (World Corporal Punishment Research) link isn't very specific. The site itself seems to be more of a link collection than an actual reference. I had to hunt through the page provided, only to find a couple of relatively modern "running the gauntlet" examples. The site search engine turned up no hits of "fustuarium", and "gauntlet" and "running the gauntlet" mostly turned up the same examples and a single useful but terse mention buried in Gunplot.net's "Naval Customs, Traditions, and Phrases".

• I replaced the Online Etymology Dictionary link, which had only 2 lines about the military use of "gauntlet", with its link to Dictionary.com, which was rather more substantial.

• The Spanish "Prizes and punishments" link has the only reference to "fustuarium" in any of the sources, but it appears to be a personal website. I'm not comfortable enough with Spanish to hunt for its sources readily. The relevant content comes from its "Castigos" ("Punishment") section. Here's my rough translation:

  Legion discipline was severe, but not as severe as generally thought. Capital punishment was applied infrequently and only in extremely grave cases, like abandoning of post or desertion. The usual way to execute the condemned was the fustuarium: the criminal was struck with stakes until killed by his fellow soldiers, whom he put in danger by his conduct. If a whole unit deserted or rebelled, rather than executing all its members, "decimation" was applied — one in ten men were chosen by lot to undergo [capital] punishment. The rest were punished by being forced to live outside the camp and subsist on barley until being pardoned. These serious punishments were rare. More commonly, offenders were given blows from twigs, posted to additional guard duty, assigned unpleasant tasks like latrine service, etc. Other punishments included reduction in rank and dishonorable discharge of the legion.

I agree with Uncle Ed above that this article should be moved to Running the gauntlet. At the same time, it should either be refactored so that this phrase leads the article, and the "fustuarium" material be turned into an origin section — assuming we can find references to back this up — or completely removed and transferred to a new fustuarium article (with appropriate edit-history credit on its talk page), since most of the edits here seem to have been about "running the gaunlet" material. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 14:24, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Jogues

The Jesuit Isaac Jogues has written that he was subject to this treatment while a prisoner of the Iroquois in 1641. He described the ordeal in a letter that appears in the book "The Jesuit Martyrs of North America" (c 1925, The Universal Knowledge Foundation, p 163).

He writes that "Before arriving (at the Iroquois Village) we met the young men of the country, in a line armed with sticks..." and that he and his fellow Frenchmen were made to walk slowly past them "for the sake of giving time to anyone who struck us."

Can't quite see how to fit this in to the article in it's present form without restructuring it which I am not ambitious enough to do. Editdroid 02:36, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Not an execution method

I've removed this from category "execution methods." While death often resulted from running the gauntlet, it was not the principal goal in the vast majority of cases, and many people survived it. In that sense it is distinguishable from execution methods like hanging, where the sentence specified that the victim be hanged until dead, and the victim would be hanged again if he survived the first attempt. Pirate Dan 21:29, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. While almost all cases definitely did not result in death and were not meant to, I'm sure that the small percentage of cases that did result in death were mostly MEANT to be executions, eventhough maybe most of them unofficially. СЛУЖБА (talk) 11:34, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Native American Usage

I just read that the gauntlet was a ceremony that was often misunderstood as a form of torture, but was seen as a way for the captives to leave their European society and become a tribal member per Dyar, Jennifer. (2003) "Fatal Attraction: The White Obsession with Indianness." The Historian. June 2003. Vol 65 Issue 4 pages 817–836 on page 823. Any quibbles? Best, Smmurphy^(Talk) 08:10, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Some sources claim it could also take the form of stoning.

removed: "Some sources claim it could also take the form of stoning. "

as it: is weaselly (some sources claim)/disparages the 'source' by using the POV word 'claim'/etc.

I have doubt about this claim without sources as well, I have not known of any other connection between death by stoning and the phrase "running the gauntlet"...

We need a source for this if it exists, before we include the phrase. User:Pedant (talk) 20:10, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Origin

I think the opening needs some explication of the origin of the phrase. User:Pedant (talk) 20:31, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok 2402:E000:500:68DF:0:0:0:1 (talk) 09:25, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

communist Poland

Security Service in communist Poland in 1980s was known of treating opposition activists this way (the practice was ironically called 'ścieżka zdrowia' - 'path of health', which was also a name of real paths in parks on which exercise devices were placed). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.219.188.205 (talk) 20:24, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Spelling is BritEng, not AmEng

oxforddictionaries.com supports "running the gauntlet", but only "gantlet" is supported by merriam-webster.com, Webster's New World Dictionary, and Chicago (at 5.220) ... although to be fair, Chicago does say the alternate spelling is "frequently seen" ... they just don't like it. Do any AmEng dictionaries support this spelling? - Dank (push to talk) 14:02, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Barry Lyndon by Thackeray

This appears in the Native American section. Is that the correct section for this example? A chapter or page reference would be helpful. Varlaam (talk) 02:55, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Actually the reference is to the 1975 movie by Stanley Kubrick. I removed this and other references to fictional films as a "source" for Native American practice. — ℜob C. alias ÀLAROB 18:33, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Rugby tunnel

The reference to a rugby tunnel, where-

"The host side forms the tunnel first, through which their opposition runs and are bumped and slapped. Directly afterward, the opposition forms a tunnel of their own and the hosts receive similar treatment."

-must be removed, for the simple reason that it is laughably false.

Find me one citation that can attest to this in the modern game. You won't be able to find one, because it's utter rubbish.

Anyone who has played the game knows that the tunnel is simply the congratulatory salute that one team gives to the other after a match.

The reference to 'bumping' and 'slapping' actually made me laugh. Handshakes are in fact the rather boring norm. Please lose this reference. It's the kind of thing that gives Wikipedia a bad name. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.156.77.96 (talk) 20:16, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

gantlet

The alternative spelling GANTLET is in common use in 2017, in mainstream sources, newspapers etc. It deserves to be included prominently in the lede (the current lede does not mention it at all).

• grammarist.com/usage/gantlet-gauntlet/

Gantlet vs. gauntlet

Gantlet was the original spelling of the word referring to a form of punishment in which people armed with sticks or other weapons arrange themselves in two lines and beat a person forced to run between them. It came from the earlier English word gantlope, which in turn comes from the Swedish gatlopp.1 Gauntlet is an alternative spelling of gantlet, but it also has several definitions of its own, mostly related to gloves.
Gantlet was the preferred spelling in early use of the phrase run the gauntlet—meaning to suffer punishment by gantlet or to endure an onslaught or ordeal—but gauntlet prevailed by the 18th century. Today, most writers use gauntlet, though gantlet, which is especially common in American English, is not incorrect.
The phrase throw down the gauntlet, meaning to issue or accept a challenge, uses gauntlet in its glove-related sense. It derives from the practice among medieval knights of challenging each other to duels by throwing down their gauntlets. So gantlet does not work as an alternative spelling here.

And the article should mention somewhere that either spelling is correct usage for RUNNING THE, but only GAUNTLET is correct usage for THROWING DOWN THE.-71.174.189.52 (talk) 13:49, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Claims needing sources

Moving some unsourced sentences here for review:

• "[Running the gauntlet] was also common practice in the French army, especially for thieves."
• "Mild forms, not intended to cause permanent damage, have also been used on or by children."
• "Running the gauntlet was also used in training, notably on military cadets, as in a scene in the movie Oberst Redl."
• "A Prussian cavalry variation was to beat the condemned with stirrup straps instead of rods."

Welcome input from anyone that has a reliable source for these. -- Euryalus (talk) 22:29, 1 September 2020 (UTC)