trap-door

plural trap-doors

1. archaicArchaic form of trapdoor.

   Your garret-windows therefore ſhould always be ſecured, and trap-doors opening to the leads well bolted.

   1786, [John] Trusler, The London Adviser and Guide: Containing Every Instruction and Information Useful and Necessary to Persons Living in London, and Coming to Reside There; […], London: […] [T]he Author, […], page 149

   4 more examples

   A bell tinkles, and forthwith the trap-doors beneath the stage open and a variety of musical instruments, followed by an equally diversified assortment of heads, are thrust through.

   1892, H[enry] Herman Chilton, “Romeo and Juliet”, in Woman Unsexed, London: W. Foulsham & Co., page 94

   It was reached by a trap-door in the middle of the floor, from which a ladder led down into the small, dark hole.

   1900 May 17, L[yman] Frank Baum, “The Cyclone”, in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Chicago, Ill.; New York, N.Y.: Geo[rge] M[elvin] Hill Co., →OCLC, page 12

   Then I went to the roof. […] A ladder and a trap-door led to it, and it required some nice balancing on my part to get up with my useless arm. […] The roof of the empty house adjoined mine along the back wing, but investigation showed that the trap-door across the low dividing wall was bolted underneath.

   1909, Mary Roberts Rinehart, “The Trap-Door”, in The Man in Lower Ten, New York, N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap, →OCLC, pages 144–145

   Oozing and surging up out of that yawning trap-door in the Cyclopean crypt I had glimpsed such an unbelievable behemothic monstrosity that I could not doubt the power of its original to kill with its mere sight.

   1933, H. P. Lovecraft, Out of the Aeons