How to Use trapdoor in a Sentence

trapdoor

noun
  • Sleep felt like a trapdoor for death, a time for all of my worst fears to creep in.
    — Grant Sutton, Vulture, 28 Oct. 2022
  • The trapdoor to the treehouse does not open from the outside.
    — Mark Nevins, Forbes.com, 28 May 2026
  • The gas would fill a box that was divided in two by a wall with a trapdoor.
    — Quanta Magazine, 1 Oct. 2025
  • Toward the bottom of this list are some of the trapdoors that drafters fell into.
    — Joe Reid, Vulture, 17 Mar. 2023
  • At the bottom of the thirteen steps that lead up to the trapdoor, Bethea paused.
    — Aaron Gilbreath, Longreads, 20 Dec. 2017
  • Like many arachnids, trapdoor spiders make burrows to hide and rest in.
    — Ben Panko, Smithsonian, 2 Aug. 2017
  • Like many arachnids, trapdoor spiders make burrows to hide and rest in.
    — Ben Panko, Smithsonian, 3 Aug. 2017
  • The stories are full of trapdoors, but Schutt’s craft is seamless.
    — Julie Orringer, New York Times, 22 June 2018
  • Lisa finds the chaise longue said to be made from mother jaguar beneath the trapdoor in her bedroom.
    — Shannon Carlin, Vulture, 31 Aug. 2021
  • Last year was supposed to be a springboard to even greater things this year, but so far, it’s seemed more like a trapdoor.
    — Jim Ingraham, Forbes, 27 Dec. 2021
  • His stomach dropped as the trapdoor opened beneath him, plunging him into a void of air.
    — George Packer, The Atlantic, 6 Nov. 2025
  • Beneath our feet were trapdoors, which opened to reveal trays of about two hundred oysters.
    — Emma Green, New Yorker, 13 Oct. 2025
  • Elsewhere around the creaking trapdoor, teams have taken big chances on new forwards.
    — Sebastian Stafford-Bloor, The Athletic, 9 Jan. 2025
  • Among his 19 pet spiders, his favorites are his two trapdoor spiders.
    — Shi En Kim, Smithsonian Magazine, 27 Oct. 2021
  • The body dropped down through a trapdoor into a cellar which connected with that of the pieman.
    — Bruce Dale, National Geographic, 17 Apr. 2019
  • Live with depression long enough and that trapdoor never closes.
    — Rene Chun, Los Angeles Magazine, 19 June 2017
  • The old trapdoor in the dining area opens to a 400-bottle wine and food cellar.
    — Mike Powell, New York Times, 9 Nov. 2016
  • Think of it as a mysterious trapdoor that leads to wonders beyond.
    — Los Angeles Times, 14 Aug. 2021
  • And then, after the host is killed, these fruiting bodies emerge and grow out of the body of the spider and grow out of the trapdoor.
    — Allison Parshall, Scientific American, 7 Apr. 2023
  • Little trapdoors open up to show a shadowy Karl, or an ominous phone, or a radio set in who knows where.
    — Vinson Cunningham, The New Yorker, 4 Dec. 2023
  • Perhaps one with a trapdoor that leads to a storage compartment (patents pending).
    — Editorial Board Star Tribune, Star Tribune, 21 Sep. 2020
  • Nor did evidence of trapdoors, subterranean rooms or tunnels at the school.
    — Christopher Goffard, Los Angeles Times, 17 July 2024
  • Below the trapdoor, stone steps led to an oblong room filled with coal that at first appeared to be little more than storage space.
    — National Geographic, 21 Apr. 2017
  • But instead of opening, the trapdoors beneath the handmaids' feet remain closed.
    — Yvonne Villarreal, latimes.com, 25 Apr. 2018
  • The zoo sent the data to Godwin, who has been studying trapdoor spiders for almost a decade.
    — Christina Zdanowicz, CNN, 3 May 2021
  • Surprisingly, Martin is not the first artist to fall through a trapdoor in recent weeks.
    — Caroline Thayer, Fox News, 4 Nov. 2024
  • Alas, whatever Cream meant to say next is lost because at that moment the scaffold’s trapdoor opened.
    — Washington Post, 11 Aug. 2021
  • Like a trapdoor, the idea swings open to reveal a fantasy too fragile and nostalgic to be taken in the open air.
    — Zoe Hu, Harper's Magazine, 21 Apr. 2023
  • In this way, a teen-ager in Kansas could warn an engineer in Shinjuku to watch out for a trapdoor.
    — Simon Parkin, The New Yorker, 25 Feb. 2022
  • At one point, the host of the tour opened a trapdoor in the floor for customers to descend a shaky, unsecured ladder into a dark hole.
    — Eric Adler, Kansas City Star, 22 Mar. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'trapdoor.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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