Meanings
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1
noun
a hinged or sliding door set into a floor, ceiling, or stage
The censor was imagined as standing beside a trapdoor between conscious and unconscious thought.
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2
noun
a hidden means of access to a computer system, or secret information that makes a hard computation easy
The audit searched the program for an undocumented trapdoor.
Thesaurus
Etymology
A compound of trap + door. The literal door can drop or conceal an opening; computing and cryptography extended that hidden-access idea to secret mechanisms in systems and functions.