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trapdoor

 
Dictionary: trap·door   (trăp'dôr', -dōr') pronunciation
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n.
A hinged or sliding door in a floor, roof, or ceiling.


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Hacker Slang: trap door
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(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
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A door set into a floor, ceiling, or roof.

Wikipedia: Trapdoor
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 This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2008)
For other uses, see Trapdoor (disambiguation).
A trapdoor to a Bomb Shelter from WW2

A trapdoor is a door set into a floor or ceiling (depending on what side of the door one is on).

Originally, trapdoors were sack traps in mills, and allowed the sacks to pass up through the mill while naturally falling back to a closed position.[1]

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 helpless 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.

Trapdoors are commonly featured in cartoons as a slapstick comic effect.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Greens Mill". http://www.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/greensmill/working.htm. 
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Translations: Trapdoor
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Home > Library > Literature & Language > Translations

Dansk (Danish)
n. - lem, luge, falddør

Français (French)
n. - trappe

Deutsch (German)
n. - Falltür

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - καταπακτή, γκλαβανή

Italiano (Italian)
botola

Português (Portuguese)
n. - escotilha (f), alçapão (f)

Русский (Russian)
капкан, западня

Español (Spanish)
n. - trampa, escotillón, ventanilla de ventilación

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - fallucka

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
地板门, 活盖, 活板门

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 地板門, 活蓋, 活板門

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 함정문, 뚜껑문, 통풍구

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - はね上げ戸, その穴

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮דלת-רצפה, דלת-תקרה‬

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Copyrights:

Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. 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 Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Trapdoor".  Read more
Translations. Copyright © 2007, WizCom Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved.  Read more