Charles John ffoulkes asserts "gauntlet" as the original sense:
- The Armourer and His Craft (2008 edition ISBN: →ISBN): "From the researches of Viscount Dillon we learn that the passguard was a reinforcing piece for the joust and the mainfaire was a gauntlet (main de fer.) Both these mistakes are still perpetuated in foreign works on the subject".
- Armour & Weapons (Good Press, 2019 edition): "The bridle-hand of the rider wears the Manifer (main-de-fer). Those writers who still follow blindly the incorrect nomenclature of Meyrick give the name Mainfaire or Manefer to the Crinet or neck defence or the horse. How this absurd play upon words can ever have been taken seriously passes understanding. The manifer is solely the rigid iron gauntlet for the bridle-hand, where no sudden or complicated movement of the wrist or fingers was needed".