trapdoor

(trăp'dôr', -dōr') pronunciation

A hinged or sliding door in a floor, roof, or ceiling.

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Hacker Slang: trap door

(alt.: trapdoor)

1. Syn. back door — a Bad Thing.

2. [techspeak] A trap-door function is one which is easy to compute but very difficult to compute the inverse of. Such functions are Good Things with important applications in cryptography, specifically in the construction of public-key cryptosystems.

Architecture: trapdoor

A door set into a floor, ceiling, or roof.

Wikipedia: trapdoor

A trapdoor is a door set into a floor or ceiling (depending on what side of the door one is on). An exposed trapdoor could also be called a hatch, although hatches may not be necessarily horizontal. Many buildings with flat roofs have hatches that provide access to the roof; on ships, hatches provide access to the deck. A small door in a wall, floor or ceiling used to gain access to equipment is called an access hatch. Hidden trapdoors occasionally appear in fiction, either as entrances to secret passageways, or as literal traps into which a hapless pedestrian may fall if he or she happens to stand on one.

Most 19th and 20th century gallows featured a trapdoor, usually with two flaps. The victim was placed at the join. The edge of a trapdoor farthest from the hinge accelerates faster than gravity, so that the victim does not hit the flaps but falls freely.

		Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more
		Hacker Slang. The Jargon File. Copyright © 2007. Read more
		Architecture. McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Architecture and Construction. Copyright © 2003 by McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more
		Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Trapdoor". Read more
		Translations. Copyright © 2007, WizCom Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved. Read more

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