OPEN DOOR • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Open door

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/ˈoʊpən dɔr/ Listen

noun

Open door n.

Open or free admission to all; hospitable welcome; free opportunity. "She of the open soul and open door, With room about her hearth for all mankind."

In modern diplomacy, opportunity for political and commercial intercourse open to all upon equal terms, esp. with reference to a nation whose policy is wholly or partially fixed by nations foreign to itself, or to territory newly acquired by a conquering nation. In this sense, often used adjectively, as, open-door system, open-door policy, etc. "The steps taken by Britain to maintain the open door have so far proved to be perfectly futile."

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Etymology of 'Open door'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Open door" Quotes from Famous Books

... beast in question! For weeks he had hardly deigned me a glance. It had been a relief, to be sure, but what a sickening disclosure of the cur's trifling inconstancy. Even now, though he sniffed hungrily at the open door, he paid me not the least attention—me whom ...

— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... and dreary burst of music came through the open door. It seemed as if the procession, which had been gradually filling up its ranks, were now about to move, and that this loud peal of the wailing trumpets, and roll of the muffled drums, were a call to some loiterer to make haste. Many eyes, by an ...

— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson

... draped and there she seated herself. She saw through a wide doorway before her a long and apparently unfurnished room dimly lighted. At the farther end she could vaguely discern violet-coloured draperies. Ormuz Khan gracefully threw himself upon a divan to the right of this open door. ...

— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer

... led Beryl through a long room, fitted up as a library and armory, and pausing before an open door, waved her into the adjoining apartment. One swift glance showed her the heavy canopied bedstead in one corner, the arch-shaped glass door leading out upon the iron veranda; and at an oblong table ...

— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... tea-pots in the window, the vast green safe in the corner, the glimpses of industrial squalor in the yard, the sound of uncouth voices from the clerks' office, the muffled beat of machinery under the floor, and the strange uninhabited useless appearance of a small room seen through a half-open door near the safe. She would have given a year of life, in that first moment, to be helping her mother in some despised ...

— Leonora • Arnold Bennett

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