trapdoor
Americannoun
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trapdoors
plural
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a door flush with the surface of a floor, ceiling, or roof.
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the opening that it covers.
adjective
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of trapdoor
First recorded in 1325–75, trapdoor is from Middle English trappe dore. See trap 1, door
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.
See Examples For:
The loop has presented Clark with a trapdoor disguised as an exit.
From Salon ● May 30, 2026
The park, which closed in late December, contains games and rides that reference past MrBeast videos, such as a trapdoor tower and catapults.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 3, 2026
Sunderland, like Newcastle before them, eventually slipped through the relegation trapdoor in 2017, and spent eight years outside the top flight.
From BBC ● Dec. 14, 2025
Scientists at the University of California, Davis report the discovery of a previously unrecognized trapdoor spider that lives in California's coastal sand dunes.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 2, 2025
Gradually the loose board levered open like a trapdoor until it was able to force its way through.
From "Watership Down: A Novel" by Richard Adams
"Are we now asking inspectors to pry up the floorboards and look for trapdoors?" he asked.
From BBC ● Sep. 22, 2023
There is action as well, involving intricate stagecraft like revolving platforms and trapdoors.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 2, 2023
This adaptation of "Station Eleven" contains so many trapdoors and routes by which it could have gone astray.
From Salon ● Dec. 17, 2021
He discovered what he needed to make his characters come to life beneath the previously unexplored trapdoors of the musical scale, in the secret seams of the dictionary.
From New York Times ● Nov. 26, 2021
My brain is an unfamiliar room and trapdoors are everywhere.
From "Everything, Everything" by Nicola Yoon
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.
