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Trapdoor   Listen
noun
Trapdoor  n.  
1.
(Arch.) A lifting or sliding door covering an opening in a roof or floor.
2.
(Mining) A door in a level for regulating the ventilating current; called also weather door.
Trapdoor spider (Zool.), any one of several species of large spiders which make a nest consisting of a vertical hole in the earth, lined with a hinged lid, like a trapdoor. Most of the species belong to the genus Cteniza, as the California species (Cteniza Californica).






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Trapdoor" Quotes from Famous Books



... where each one of her subordinates was to stay, and what they were to do in case of an attack. Every door and window was barricaded, every possible precaution taken, and then, with an unflinching nerve, Alice stole up the stairs, and unfastening a trapdoor which led out upon the roof, stood there behind a huge chimney top, scanning wistfully the darkness of the woods, waiting, watching for a foe, whose very name was in itself sufficient to blanch ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes

... and pullies was also indistinctly heard, though every caution had been taken to make them run smooth; and the traveller, by feeling around him, became sensible that he and the bed on which he lay had been spread upon a large trapdoor, which was capable of being let down into the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 373, Supplementary Number • Various

... her coffin. Not content with the kiss, Mashenka leaps up and impulsively embraces me. At that instant, Mashenka's maman appears in the doorway of the arbour. . . . She makes a face as though in alarm, and saying "sh-sh" to someone with her, vanishes like Mephistopheles through the trapdoor. ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... /n./ A semi-mythical language construct dual to the 'go to'; 'COME FROM' would cause the referenced label to act as a sort of trapdoor, so that if the program ever reached it control would quietly and {automagically} be transferred to the statement following the 'COME FROM'. 'COME FROM' was first proposed in R. Lawrence Clark's "A Linguistic Contribution to GOTO-less programming", ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... Hal o' Nabs had joined the group, and proceeding towards a raised part of the chamber where the grinding-stones were set, he knelt down, and laying hold of a small ring, raised up a trapdoor. The fresh air which blew up through the aperture, combined with the rushing sound of water, showed that the Calder flowed immediately beneath; and, having made some slight preparation, Hal let ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... casement; abatjour[obs3]; light; sky light, fan light; lattice; bay window, bow window; oriel[Arch]; dormer, lantern. outlet, inlet; vent, vomitory; embouchure; orifice, mouth, sucker, muzzle, throat, gullet, weasand[obs3], wizen, nozzle; placket. portal, porch, gate, ostiary|, postern, wicket, trapdoor, hatch, door; arcade; cellarway[obs3], driveway, gateway, doorway, hatchway, gangway; lich gate[obs3]. way, path &c. 627; thoroughfare; channel; passage, passageway; tube, pipe; water pipe &c. 350; air pipe &c. 351; vessel, tubule, canal, gut, fistula; adjutage[obs3], ajutage[obs3]; ostium[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... like a roseate side-chamber to the hall. Outside of this the stone-paved floor spread away unevenly. She turned her eyes from the arms of La Tour over the mantel to trace seamed and footworn flags, and noticed in the distant corner, at the bottom of the stairs, that they gave way to a trapdoor of timbers. This was fastened down with iron bars, and had a huge ring for its handle. Her eyes rested on it in fear, betwixt the ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... The trapdoor of the lazaretto was lifted. Joe and the two sailors descended the ladder and, with some difficulty, one of the boxes ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty

... (to delight) ravi. Transport (by vehicle) veturigi. Transport transporti. Transportation transportado. Transpose transloki. Transverse lauxlargxa, diagonala. Trap (snare) kaptilo, enfalujo. Trap kapti. Trapdoor plankpordo. Trapezium trapezo. Trash (rubbish) forjxetajxo. Travail nasklaboro, naskdoloro. Travel (by car) veturi. Travel vojiri, vojagxi. Traveller vojagxanto. Traverse trapasi, trairi. Travesty maskajxo. Tray ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... could see nothing. Raffles reached across me and tapped the ventilator, a sort of trapdoor in the wall above his bed, some eighteen inches long and half that height. It opened outwards into ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... architecture, like all things in this world that attempt serenity, is bound to have its lapses into the undignified, and Cadover lapsed hopelessly when it came to Stephen's room. It gave him one round window, to see through which he must lie upon his stomach, one trapdoor opening upon the leads, three iron girders, three beams, six buttresses, no circling, unless you count the walls, no walls unless you count the ceiling and in its embarrassment presented him with the gurgly cistern ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster

... too, that couldn't place Mildred, until some one hints that maybe she's a sure enough swell whose folks had gone broke, and that she's picked out a typewriter job as a sort of trapdoor that would let her down out of sight and ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford

... cells—where a large number of prisoners may be kept together. They are often useful when suffrage demonstrators are on the warpath, or when, say, a gambling raid has taken place. These, like the other cells, have what their most frequent occupants call "Judas holes"—a small trapdoor which can be let down from outside to see that all is ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot

... squares and open places. Each of these theaters consisted of a two-story platform, set on wheels. The lower story was a dressing room for the actors; the upper story was the stage proper, and was reached by a trapdoor from below. When the play was over the platform was dragged away, and the next play in the cycle took its place. So in a single square several plays would be presented in rapid sequence to the same audience. Meanwhile the first play moved on to another square, where another audience was ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... him a sort of passage way, by which they ascended forty-nine steps roughly hewn in stone, and so came to daylight. At the top of the stairway was an iron trapdoor, and this door at the girl's instruction Jurgen lowered. There was no way of fastening the door ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... mysterious apartment; it was not really a temple, but a sort of public hall and general lounging place; such rooms exist in the Spanish-speaking pueblos of Zuni and Laguna, and are there called estufas. The explorers soon discovered that the only entrance into the estufa was by a trapdoor and a ladder. Now Aunt Maria hated ladders: they were awkward for skirts, and moreover they made her giddy; so she simply got on her knees and peeped through the trap-door. But there was a fire directly ...
— Overland • John William De Forest

... this," she told them. "Then climb into the attic, and close the trapdoor. They won't never find ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... sticks instead of laths, and then thatched over a great thickness with the rice straw, which was strong like reeds; and at the hole or place which was left to go in or out by the ladder, I had placed a kind of trapdoor, which if it had been attempted on the outside, would not have opened at all, but would have fallen down, and made a great noise; and as to weapons, I took them all in to my ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... leading the way to the cellar, which they gained by raising the trapdoor in the kitchen floor and descending a ladder, this being the customary way of getting to the cellar in ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce

... to say that Walter found the book "very nice." The virtuous Amalia, in the glare of flaring torches, at the death-bed of her revered mother, in the dismal cypress valley, swearing that her ardent love for the noble robber—through the horrible trapdoor, the rusty chains, her briny tears—in a word, it was stirring! And there was more morality in it, too, than in all the insipid imitations. All the members of the band were married and wore gloves. In the cave ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli

... The boy closed the trapdoor and withdrew. In a few minutes a young man, smartly dressed, with sparse moustache and a pince-nez, came out of a ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim

... including the names of all the persons and institutions participating in the microfilm project. The History Department at the Fort would be interested in that, but the only thing that interested Altamont was the statement that the floor had been laid over the trapdoor leading to the vault where the microfilms were stored. He went ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire

... house, and again searched the upstairs rooms, looking particularly for a trapdoor, for the bamboo ladder suggested some such exit. This time, however, he completely failed. Jasper Cole, he found, had made only one visit to the house ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace

... flame that caught them, that ran along their ranks and sent them hurtling Earthward—blackened corpses in blazing coffins. "Abandon ships!" The adjutant's last order crisped, coldly metallic, soldierly as ever. In the next breath, as Allan reached for the lever that would open the trapdoor beneath him, he saw the command-ship ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat

... of the hatchway, its top leaning toward the spectator. The small smoke-blackened sticks that are used for the suspension of bundles of greasewood and other fuel in the hatchway are clearly shown. At the far end of the trapdoor, on the outside, is indicated the mat of reeds or rushes that is used for closing the openings when necessary. It is here shown rolled up at the foot of the slope of the hatchway top, its customary position when not in use. When this mat is used for closing the kiva opening it is ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff

... have made more or less of a 'metaphysical entity' out of the censor. They suppose that when wishes are repressed they are repressed into the 'unconscious,' and that this mysterious censor stands at the trapdoor lying between the conscious and the unconscious. Many of us do not believe in a world of the unconscious (a few of us even have grave doubts about the usefulness of the term consciousness), hence we try to explain censorship along ordinary biological lines. We believe that one group of habits ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell

... look into her mouse-trap, where she found six mice, all alive, and ordered Cinderella to lift up a little the trapdoor, when, giving each mouse, as it went out, a little tap with her wand, the mouse was that moment turned into a fine horse, which altogether made a very fine set of six horses of a beautiful mouse-colored dapple-gray. Being at ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various

... solemnly upon the turf and raises a small iron trapdoor—hitherto overlooked by the omniscient Cockerell—revealing a cavity some six inches deep, containing an electric plug-hole. Into this he thrusts the terminal of the telephone wire. Cockerell, scarlet in the ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay

... sacs, under water. In the common species of Utricularia or bladderwort, these little sacs, hanging from submerged leaves or branches, have their orifice closed by a lid which opens inwardly—a veritable trapdoor. It had been noticed in England and France that they contained minute crustacean animals. Early in the summer of 1874, Mr. Darwin ascertained the mechanism for their capture and the great success with ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... of triumph he muttered at the moment that his glance rested upon it, and five seconds later he had the trapdoor open and was peering down into the narrow pit in which wooden steps rested. The spaniel began to bark wildly, whereupon Kerry grasped him, tucked him under his arm, and ran up to the room above, where he deposited the furiously wriggling animal. He stepped quickly back again ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... what will happen. Our interest is inclined to flag when life at the abbey seems uneventful, but we are ere long rewarded by a visit from a stranger, whose approach flings La Motte into so violent a state of alarm that he vanishes with remarkable abruptness beneath a trapdoor. It proves, however, that the intruder is merely La Motte's son, and the timid marquis is able to emerge. Meanwhile, La Motte's wife, suspicious of her husband's morose habits and his secret visits to a Gothic sepulchre, becomes jealous of Adeline, ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... came with the ladder, which he placed in a dark corner of a passage, and, ascending, opened a trapdoor, and urged the party to mount without delay. Oliver went up first. Jack was able to get up without assistance. Le Duc was unwilling to go until the old lady ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston

... a fire and prepared breakfast. A half-filled bottle of whisky discovered in the cupboard, helped to revive all of us slightly, and gave Asa sufficient courage to seek outside for a spring. Tim, comparatively unwearied himself, and restless, located a trapdoor in the floor, rather ingeniously concealed, which disclosed the existence of a small cellar below. Candle in hand he explored this, returning with two guns, together with a quantity of powder ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish

... bird's fiat, it can be opened and closed and made to assume a great variety of forms. Moreover, just in front of it there is a fold of mucous membrane called the epiglottis, which is in reality a tiny trapdoor closing over the opening when necessity requires. When the bird swallows food or drink, this little flap shuts down, and prevents the entrance of any clogging substance into the windpipe to ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser

... got gall, shore. I'll jest finish dis battleship—so he won't jump no moh." He had grabbed the armor and started toward the trapdoor. "I'm goin' to sink ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard

... began its first air the trapdoor was opened and down the ladder came a young man clad in a suit of black tights. He was entirely covered with black with the exception of his right arm, which was bare to a point a little more than halfway from the elbow to his shoulder. ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne

... Pierre and Paul Lanier emerge from a trapdoor, cutting off escape. With cocked pistols and drawn daggers, they ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee

... was a bend, at right angles; and next, at the end of another tunnel of the same length, a trapdoor, which stood open, revealing the rungs of a second ladder. He did not doubt that the fugitives had ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... that prevented the trapdoor from opening beneath the feet of the unwary until such time as Lu-don chose the high priest rose ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... a level with the ground outside, could be approached only by a trapdoor and ladder from the room above—was the storeroom, and contained sacks of barley and oatmeal, sides of bacon, firewood, sacks of beans, and trusses of hay for the use of the horses and cattle, should the place have to stand a short siege. In the ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty

... that, just like an apparition out of a trapdoor, appeared the friend of her heart, the master of the cabaret, a young little Pole, with moustaches twirled high. They drank some wine, talked a bit about the fair, about the exposition, complained a ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... Regent Street. At Oxford Circus the Jew's cab led us to the left, and along Oxford Street we chased it past Bond Street end. Suddenly my cab pulled up with a jerk, and the driver spoke through the trapdoor. "That fare's getting down, sir," he said, "at the corner ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison

... he waited for neighbouring campanili to box the ears of slumber's votaries in turn; whereupon, under pretence of excessive conscientiousness, or else oblivious of his antecedent, damnable misconduct, or perhaps in actual league and trapdoor conspiracy with the surging goblin hosts beneath us, he resumed his blaring strokes, a sonorous recapitulation of the number; all the others likewise. It was an alarum fit to warn of Attila or Alaric; and not, simply the maniacal noise invaded the fruitful provinces of sleep like ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... sons keep a good watch... If any one attempts to deliver him, so much the worse for him. The trapdoor is there. ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc

... she was to meet him on the third night, had he forgotten that the old castellan barred and bolted all that wing of the castle by eleven o'clock, so that she could never leave the corridor by the usual way; but there was a trapdoor near her little chamber which led down into the ducal stables, and this door no one ever thought of or minded—it was never bolted night or day, and was quite large enough for a man to creep through. Her dear Prince might wait for her, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... exclaimed suddenly; "there must be a trapdoor somewhere for lowering the sacks. There is a wheel hanging to the ceiling; the trap ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty

... and presently I heard a dull thumping, on the trap-door, in a sort of rhythm, like the foot-beating of spectators at Oscan dances. After no long interval the trapdoor ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... matter of fact, nothing could be more simple. We were on the top floor of the hotel, and beside us, in the niche corresponding to the stairs below, was an iron ladder that led to a neatly-whitewashed trapdoor in the roof. Adopting her suggestion, I pushed against this trap-door and found that it yielded readily; then, standing at the top of the ladder, I looked about me on a dim expanse of tiles and chimneys; yet ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... with her heart aching for pity of him, to forbid him and rebuke him for breaking his promise, and to scold him away. But as she stood listening, and the voice came again she knew it was not the voice of Laban. She ran to the ladder which led to the cabin loft, and called up through the open trapdoor, "Jane! Jane! Come down here to the baby, will you? I've got to ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells

... oriel [Arch.]; dormer, lantern. outlet, inlet; vent, vomitory; embouchure; orifice, mouth, sucker, muzzle, throat, gullet, weasand^, wizen, nozzle; placket. portal, porch, gate, ostiary^, postern, wicket, trapdoor, hatch, door; arcade; cellarway^, driveway, gateway, doorway, hatchway, gangway; lich gate^. way, path &c 627; thoroughfare; channel; passage, passageway; tube, pipe; water pipe &c 350; air pipe &c 351; vessel, tubule, canal, gut, fistula; adjutage^, ajutage^; ostium^; smokestack; chimney, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... floor and the end of the hall which divided it into two sections, and from whence a ladder ran upright to a trapdoor opening on the sloping roof. The scuttle had been left open for ventilation, and up this steep stairway Luis was ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond

... what you would have done long ago if you had been a good soldier, but I reckon he's coming without waiting to be called," observed Dixon, as an imperious knock, followed by the command to "open up here, immediately," was heard at the trapdoor. "Now, Rodney, don't let's have any more nonsense over ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon

... possibly by entering an adjoining house, ascending the stairs to its roof and crossing therefrom to the house within which Jesus was teaching. They broke away part of the roof, making an opening, or enlarging that of the trapdoor such as the houses of that place and time were usually provided with; and, to the surprize of the assembled crowd, they then let down through the tiling the portable couch upon which the palsied sufferer lay. Jesus was deeply impressed by the faith and works[413] of those ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... go down the stairs again. Then the soldiers came one after another and tried their strength against the trapdoor. But, finding their efforts useless, they all returned to the cellar and ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... races, corn-huskings, or weddings were seldom closed without drunkenness, and oftentimes fisticuffs or the more fatal duel with knife or pistol. Jackson had "killed his man," and Benton had been knocked through a trapdoor into the basement of a Nashville bar-room; Clay and Poindexter, the Mississippi Governor and Senator, had had more than one encounter in which life ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd

... aimlessly in the vicinity of that silent, deserted, cruel spot, where a closed trapdoor seemed to shut off all his hopes of a speedy sight of Jeanne. He inquired of the first sentinels whom he came across at what hour the clerk of the registers would be back at his post; the soldiers shrugged ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy

... as are at hot work. Now let us despatch this bawling fellow below. You, Mercury, go see who it is, and know what he wants. Mercury looked out at heaven's trapdoor, through which, as I am told, they hear what is said here below. By the way, one might well enough mistake it for the scuttle of a ship; though Icaromenippus said it was like the mouth of a well. The light-heeled ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... outside up to the main door of the loft, over which still dangled from the block and pulley the rope that had suspended the irate Lee Wing earlier in the day. It was also possible to enter by the usual method—a trapdoor in the floor over a ladder leading from the floor below; but this was considered by the men scarcely suitable for their partners. All traces of its usual contents had, of course, been removed from the big room, and the floor gleamed in the light, mute evidence of the ardour with which Mr. ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... "A trapdoor near her bows fell down, the White Ensign was broken at the fore, and a 4-inch gun opened fire from the embrasure that was revealed on ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon

... variety in vogue for a short time had a trapdoor, on which the lobster had to climb in order to reach the bait; the door then gave way and precipitated the lobster ...
— The Lobster Fishery of Maine - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, Vol. 19, Pages 241-265, 1899 • John N. Cobb



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