velvet glove
Americannoun
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“That velvet glove can come off, and the people know it can come off,” but mostly, you want them to comply because it feels like “just what has to be.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 28, 2025
“We’ve got to a point where we can no longer be able to afford the velvet glove diplomacy.”
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 16, 2023
A Republican colleague, Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr., once told the Herald that Ms. Meek had “a velvet glove, but sometimes she can have a fist in it. She’s so likable that it’s sometimes disarming.”
From Washington Post ● Nov. 29, 2021
“It’s nice if you can put a velvet glove over the iron fist.”
From New York Times ● Feb. 21, 2018
But to have exchanged the velvet glove of his mother for the velvet glove of Eve would have meant a lifetime of bondage.
From A World Apart by Merwin, Sam
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
