What is a proverbial gauntlet?

Answer 1

"throwing down the gauntlet" means to challenge someone. They used to do it when dueling was popular. Someone would throw down their gauntlet, and if the person took it up, that meant that they accepted the challenge and the fight was on. Today, we don't usually wear gauntlets, but we still challenge each other, and argue... so a "proverbial gauntlet" would be something that someone would use to challenge someone else, or if you said "she threw down the proverbial gauntlet" you would mean that she challenged someone else for leadership or supremacy. "proverbial" means "from a proverb" but sometimes just means old... something from the legends or tales of the past, as it does in this case.