Manchette

A manchette is a term used to describe a sleeve or glove covering the hand or forearm or as a printing term to describe a vertical heading within a newspaper or similar publication. This term comes to English from the original French word manchette or michette, from the word manche, "sleeve." It is related to the Spanish word mancha, as in Don Quixote de la Mancha.

Contents

Usage

Fencing: In fencing, sabreurs wear a special glove called a manchette on their weapon hand. Covered by a type of brocaded fabric with inwoven metal threads that serve as a conductive surface that aids in the practice of electric fencing, the manchette is worn on the hand and wrist. The manchette is conducting up to but not exceeding the wrist area. It is worn in conjunction with a lamé.

Cycling: In cycling, a sleeve for the forearm, worn especially by triathletes, is called a manchette. The sleeve is often made of a satin-weave knit blend of polypropylene, spandex, or other advanced sport fabrics coated with an ultrasmooth synthetic coating, such as polytetrafluoroethylene, to reduce wind drag.

Furniture: In furniture-making a manchette refers to an upholstered arm on a wooden-frame chair like a bergère or fauteuil. The manchette is most often upholstered in silk lampas, silk jacquard, or brocade.

Medical: In the medical fields, a manchette refers to a conically shaped array of microtubules that completely covers the nucleus of a spermatid.

Printing: Manchette is also used as a printing term to indicate a vertical heading within a newspaper article or increasingly a computer generated image.

Historical use

Bread making; A manchette or manchet is a sweet bread (not a sweetbread) that has largely fallen out of favour but was so called because it was small enough to be carried in a gloved hand. The preference for similar sized french rolls had replaced the common usage in England of manchet(tes) by the mid Victorian period.

See also

References