door
n. countablen. a flat object that you open and close so you can enter or leave a room, building, or car.
n. a hinged, sliding, or revolving barrier used to close an opening in a wall or cabinet. Often used metaphorically to describe an entry point or opportunity.
Please close the door when you leave the room.
She knocked on the front door and waited for someone to let her inside the house.
The heavy oak door swung open on rusted hinges, revealing a dimly lit hallway that smelled of old paper and floor wax.
From Middle English dore, dor, from Old English duru (“door”), dor (“gate”), from Proto-West Germanic dur, from Proto-Germanic durz, from Proto-Indo-European dʰwṓr, from dʰwer- (“doorway, door, gate”). Cognates Cognate with Scots door (“door”), Saterland Frisian Doore (“door”), West Frisian doar (“door”), Dutch deur (“door”), German Low German Door, Döör (“door”), German Tür (“door”), Tor (“gate”), Danish, Norn, and Norwegian dør (“door”), Faroese and Icelandic dyr (“door”), Asturian, Aragonese, and Spanish fuera (“outside”), Catalan, Leonese, and Portuguese fora (“outside”), French hors (“outside”), Galician fóra (“outside”), Italian fuori (“outside”), Mirandese fuora (“outside”), Latin foris and foras (“outside”), Ancient Greek θύρα (thúra), Albanian derë (“door”), Central Kurdish دەرگە (derge, “door”), Northern Kurdish derî (“door”), Persian در (dar, “door”), Belarusian дзве́ры (dzvjéry, “door”), Bulgarian две́ри (dvéri, “royal doors”), Czech dveře (“door”), Latvian durvis (“door”), Lithuanian durys (“door”), Macedonian двер (dver, “door”), Polish drzwi (“door”), Russian дверь (dverʹ), Serbo-Croatian dvȇri (“door”), dvar (“door”), Ukrainian две́рі (dvéri, “door”), Hindi द्वार (dvār, “door”), Armenian դուռ (duṙ, “door”), Irish doras (“door”), Sanskrit द्वार (dvāra, “door”). Despite similarities in spelling, not cognate with Dutch door, which is instead cognate with English through.
Commonly used with the verbs 'open', 'close', 'shut', 'lock', and 'knock'.
- 01
bang down the door
To present oneself as a strong candidate for a role or achievement, explicitly or implicitly.
- 02
close the stable door after the horse has bolted
To attempt to prevent a problem that has already occurred; to design and implement a preventive mechanism that is too late (after the first failure instead of before).
- 03
darken a church door
To go to church to attend a service.