An Idiom Saturday filler: To “handle with kid/kit gloves”
Posted By RichC on July 8, 2023
Once you learn something and then hear it used incorrectly, it makes me cringe. I wanted to correct someone on the news last week using the phrase “handle with kid gloves” … knowing the original was to “handle with kit gloves.”
Oh well …
Origin
The origin of the term ‘kit gloves’ can be tracked back to the early days of fox hunting, where the gloves used to handle young foxes with as much gentleness as possible (yet safety for the handler) were referred to as ‘kit gloves’.
The use of the expression to handle something ‘with kit gloves’ arose somewhere in the 1800s. The saying is likely to have spread with the rise of the printing press, and the further use of the term through travel and media.
The term ‘kit gloves’ is likely to have been corrupted to ‘kid gloves’ through repetitive, incorrect use. The term ‘kit gloves’ is correct, though the term ‘kid gloves’ is still frequently seen.
According to internet resources, the term was first introduced to the dictionary in the 1900s.
Comments