Word.ws English Dictionary

kid glove

kid glove noun: a metaphorical representation of careful handling.

Noun

kid glove (plural kid gloves)

  1. (figuratively, plural-normally) A metaphorical representation of careful handling.
    • to handle with kid gloves
    • He's usually very sensitive about this sort of thing; make sure you put on your kid gloves before you see him.
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see kid, glove.
    • As he saw her hands in their old black kid gloves getting the silver out of the worn purse, his heart contracted with pain of love of her.1913, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, chapter V, in Sons and Lovers, London: Duckworth & Co. […], →OCLC
    • By degrees the room grew perceptibly hotter. The smell of kid gloves mingled with the strong scent of flowers.1915, Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out, London: Duckworth & Co., […], →OCLC

Examples of kid glove in a sentence

  • I wanted to put on kid gloves and be there in case the shattering came."2005, Jeffrey John Kripal, Glenn W. Shuck, On the Edge of the Future: Esalen and the Evolution of American Culture, page 154:
  • This time around the enemy took off the kid gloves.2008, Barbie Jones, The Power to Choose - A Victim No More, page 44:

Forms of kid glove

pluralkid gloves

Origin of kid glove

From kid gloves (made from the skin of a young lamb or goat), a particularly fine, soft material.

Words formed from kid glove

Questions about kid glove

What does kid glove mean?
Kid glove means a metaphorical representation of careful handling.
How do you use kid glove in a sentence?
I wanted to put on kid gloves and be there in case the shattering came."
What part of speech is kid glove?
Kid glove is a noun.
What is the plural of kid glove?
The plural of kid glove is kid gloves.

Words near kid glove in the dictionary

  1. kicky-wicky
  2. kid
  3. kid around
  4. kid brother
  5. kid brothers
  6. kid glove
  7. kid gloves
  8. kid hack
  9. kid leather
  10. kid leathers
  11. kid on

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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-kid glove.wav.

Cite this entry: “kid glove.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kid_glove. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.