A glove is a garment covering the hand, with separate sheaths or openings for each finger including the thumb.

Gloves are made of materials including cloth, knitted or felted wool, leather, rubber, latex, neoprene, silk, and (in mail) metal.

Latex, nitrile rubber or vinyl disposable gloves are often worn by health care professionals as hygiene and contamination protection measures.

Many criminals wear gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints, which makes the crime investigation more difficult.

Guitar players may also use fingerless gloves in circumstances where it is too cold to play with an uncovered hand.

[4] According to some translations of Homer's The Odyssey, Laërtes is described as wearing gloves while walking in his garden so as to avoid the brambles.

[5] Such worldly accoutrements were not for holy women, according to the early 13th century Ancrene Wisse, written for their guidance.

[11] It was not until the 16th century that gloves reached their greatest elaboration, however, when Queen Elizabeth I set the fashion for wearing them richly embroidered and jewelled,[5] and for putting them on and taking them off during audiences to draw attention to her beautiful hands.

Knitted gloves were a refined handiwork that required five years of apprenticeship; defective work was subject to confiscation and burning.

This particular fad was the product of a manufacturer in Limerick, Ireland, who fashioned the gloves from the skin of unborn calves.

Thus Matthew of Paris, in recording the burial of Henry II of England in 1189, mentions that he was buried in his coronation robes with a golden crown on his head and gloves on his hands.

The liturgical use of gloves has not been traced beyond the beginning of the 10th century, and their introduction may have been due to a simple desire to keep the hands clean for the holy mysteries, but others suggest that they were adopted as part of the increasing pomp with which the Carolingian bishops were surrounding themselves.

From the Frankish kingdom the custom spread to Rome, where liturgical gloves are first heard of in the earlier half of the 11th century.

[18] When short sleeves came into fashion in the 1700s, women began to wear long gloves, reaching halfway up the forearm.

The term was also used for white cotton gloves worn with the dress uniform by the American military in the First World War.

Fingerless gloves are often padded in the palm area, to provide protection to the hand, and the exposed fingers do not interfere with sensation or gripping.

[31][32] Some anglers, particularly fly fishermen, favour fingerless gloves to allow manipulation of line and tackle in cooler conditions.

As soft as a leather glove may be, its pores and grain provide a level of friction when "gripped" against an item or surface.

Welders use gloves too for protection against electrical shocks, extreme heat, ultraviolet and infrared.

Gloves are worn by criminals because the tactile properties of the leather allow for good grip and dexterity.

[33][34] Leather is a natural product with special characteristics that make it comfortable to wear, and give it great strength and flexibility.

Overtime wear spots may appear on certain parts of the palm and fingertips, due to the constant use of those areas of the glove.

Creases and wrinkles will appear on the palm side of the leather glove and will generally correspond to the locations of the hinge joints of the wearer's hands, including the interphalangeal articulations of hand, metacarpophalangeal joints, intercarpal articulations, and wrists.

Michael Jackson often wore a single jeweled glove on his right hand, which helped develop his signature look.

[39] A dark leather glove became an important piece of evidence in the O. J. Simpson murder case.