Far from being only a boring old simple noun, the word ‘door’ is probably one of the most metaphorically-used words in the English language, and is loaded with symbolism and meaning. It brings with it a sense of poetry, and a door can be your safety and protection, your captor, your privacy, your ticket to a different place, or all of the above at different times. With that in mind, we’re going to look at doors through the blog with all of their different meanings, in all of their associated clichés, look at their namesakes and what they are famous for.

Many of us use the word in clichés or aphorisms, to colour up our language. Here are some of the common door clichés:

Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out!

Sounds like the sentiments of a helpful friend, doesn’t it! But this saying is quintessentially American, and with their talent for sarcasm, it actually means the opposite  This saying means you are glad to see the person leave, and that you wish them every possible bad luck on their way! Another, rhyming version – ‘Don’t let the door hit you wher the Good Lord split you’.

At Death’s Door

I think this is a beautiful way to look at death – as the beginning of another room, another house, or another world. A door must have something on the other side. A much more positive way of thinking about it than becoming food for worms (grateful as those worms may be), or being a candle that was snuffed out.

Slicker than snot on a doorknob / Slicker than deer guts on a doorknob

Eeewwww… in a way, these are one of the best door clichés, although the most disgusting! In most cases they would refer to a person who is sleazy, slimy and disingenuous – and the feeling you get from imagining using a doorknob covered in deer guts is probably exactly the feeling the author intended convey about speaking to one of these sleazy people!

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Thank you to Period Living Magazine for featuring our Art Nouveau Style Table Lamp and few of our cupboard knobs in their October Issue.

How many door and drawer handles or knobs would you guess you touch in the average day?

Well, the internet is a wide and wonderful world unto itself, and one research oriented soul decided to actually find out! This seemingly simple, but actually very deep (and fun!) research project had only the criteria that every door or drawer handle or knob that the person used in a day, had to be photographed and recorded. Aside from the obvious quandaries of whether to count both sides of a door handle, and whether to count both getting in and out of a car, if you can not get caught up in the mathematics and science of it, he did note that it really helped him to focus on the here and now – what he was actually doing, and not what he was planning or about to do (in the context of the door handles, at least). Interestingly, this is one of the main aims of Buddhists – to focus on what one is actually doing right at every single moment. And I’m guessing that this sort of project wouldn’t be out of our scope either, as we get to photograph all of the gorgeous knobs that we have been filling our homes with!

You could try this sort of thing yourself, at home, as I did, only without the photographic record. Compare all of the different sorts of handles, how they feel and turn, how they operate (up/down or rotating), and how they look. When I tried it, I resolved to both clean and replace quite a few of my door knobs! Maybe when I try it on my floors tomorrow, they will also get a bit of the attention they have been lacking in…!

Photo credits: Reach by Fernando de Sousa