Manicle

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    On armor, a kind of attached mail glove or gauntlet.

    "[Footnotes:] impossible: Gawain clearly considers his pledge to be as binding as an oath. gauntlets: strictly speaking, manicles would in this case be chainmail mittens."

  2. 2
    Obsolete form of manacle. alt-of, obsolete

    "One implication of “deliverance” is release from the bondage of the mind, nicely summed up by William Blake's “mindforg'd manicles” (102). When the mind is unaware of its enslavement, emancipation is impossible."

Example

More examples

"[Footnotes:] impossible: Gawain clearly considers his pledge to be as binding as an oath. gauntlets: strictly speaking, manicles would in this case be chainmail mittens."

Etymology

From Middle English manicle, from Old French manicle (“gauntlet; manacle”).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.