drop the gloves

From the practice of ice hockey players of removing their heavy gloves before striking blows in fistfights.

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drop the gloves (third-person singular simple present drops the gloves, present participle dropping the gloves, simple past and past participle dropped the gloves)

1. (Canada and US, ice hockey, idiomatic) To fight.
   • 2007 March 27, Mike Brophy, “Getting rid of the goons”, in Globe and Mail, Canada, retrieved 14 October 2008:

     Nobody used to care when players such as John Ferguson, Bobby Orr, Gordie Howe and Maurice Richard dropped the gloves, because they could play the game, too.

2. (Canada and US, idiomatic, by extension) To remove a prior impediment to action; to prepare for or engage in a dispute.
   • 2000 January 30, Thomas DeFrank et al., “George W. & Al Bank on Bubba”, in New York Daily News, retrieved 14 October 2008:

     But Bradley, who dropped the gloves on Gore in a combative debate Wednesday night and called the vice president chronically dishonest, ignored Sullivan's advice.