Glove

How to spell glove

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce glove

What does glove mean?

1. nounA covering for the hand with separate sections for each finger and the thumb.

Glove in a sentence

• She pulled one leather glove over her cold fingers.

• The surgeon snapped on a fresh latex glove before the procedure.

Where does glove come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Glove comes straight from the Old English glōf, the native Anglo-Saxon name for a hand covering with separate sheaths for each finger. The word has close cousins across the old Germanic languages, including the Old Norse glofi, which carried the same meaning, so it has belonged to everyday English for well over a thousand years. Some scholars suggest it was originally formed from the prefix ga- joined to a root related to lofi, meaning the flat of the hand or palm, though that ancient build-up is no longer felt by modern speakers. Because it is such an old native word, its spelling looks irregular today: the silent terminal -e and the soft v sound are simply leftovers from older pronunciation and spelling habits rather than any borrowing. The same short o, pronounced 'uh', also turns up in its near relatives 'love' and 'dove', which is exactly why the vowel can trip writers up.

How the word is built

• glove (single root from Old English glōf, a covering for the hand); no prefix or suffix