kid-glove
kid-glove adjective: marked by extreme care or sensitivity.
Adjective
kid-glove (not comparable)
- Marked by extreme care or sensitivity.
- kid-glove handling
- “Hell’s bells, no!” said the discreetly indiscreet Ambassador. “I’m a diplomat now. I've got to don kid glove manners.”1929 June 24, Charles G. Dawes, quotee, “National Affairs”, in Time, volume 13, number 25, page 11
Verb
kid-glove (third-person singular simple present kid-gloves, present participle kid-gloving, simple past and past participle kid-gloved)
- To treat mildly.
- It is the policy of the politician to avoid trouble, to soft pedal on principle so that votes will not be lost. But, as day follows night, kid-gloving criminals leads to anarchy.1943, Hon. Clare E. Hoffman, “Better Late Than Never”, in Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the 78th Congress, volume 89, United States Government Printing Office, page A3226
- ‘They're all pro-German. We should shoot the leaders, pack the rest off to France. In my opinion, there is too much kid-gloving in this country.’2001, Jamie O'Neill, At Swim, Two Boys, Scribner, →ISBN, page 491
- Synonyms:
- wrist-slap
Synonyms of kid-glove
Forms of kid-glove
| third-person singular present | kid-gloves |
|---|---|
| present participle | kid-gloving |
| past participle | kid-gloved |
| past | kid-gloved |
Origin of kid-glove
See kid glove.
Questions about kid-glove
- What does kid-glove mean?
- Kid-glove means marked by extreme care or sensitivity.
- What part of speech is kid-glove?
- Kid-glove can be an adjective or a verb.
Words near kid-glove in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: kid-glove (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “kid-glove.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kid-glove. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.