SKELETON KEY • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Skeleton key

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/skˈɛlətən ki/ Listen

Skeleton key

noun

A passkey with much of the bit filed away so that it can open different locks.

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Etymology of 'Skeleton key'

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"Skeleton key" Quotes from Famous Books

... stories. But after all, how little difference it makes whether or not a writer appears with a mask on which everybody can take off,—whether he bolts his door or not, when everybody can look in at his windows, and all his entrances are at the mercy of the critic's skeleton key and the jimmy of ...

— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... skeleton key used by housebreakers to open a lock. To stand on the screw signifies that a door is not bolted, but ...

— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.

... we'll effect an entrance," he declared, and produced a curious-looking skeleton key. "This ...

— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond

... have fancied that gloves were a kind of passport, or perhaps a skeleton key guaranteed to open principals' doors. It was Mr. Smith who first made me feel that there was a connection between morals, respectability, and cold baths. To miss the morning tub, as Mr. Smith saw it, was not merely a calamity but also a disgrace; a thing to make one ashamed; a lapse calculated ...

— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... arm, a skeleton key was selected from the bunch, and then back went his arm to the shoulder. It was a breathless moment. I heard the heart throbbing in my body, the very watch ticking in my pocket, and ever and anon the tinkle-tinkle of the skeleton key. Then—at last—there ...

— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung