Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A way of avoiding or escaping a cost or legal burden that would otherwise apply by means of an omission or ambiguity in the wording of a contract or law.
- noun A small hole or slit in a wall, especially one through which small arms may be fired.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A small aperture, narrow toward the outside and splayed within, in the walls of a fortification or of any similar structure, through which small-arms may be fired at an enemy, or observations may be taken.
- noun An opening into or out of anything; a hole or aperture that gives a passage or the means of escape: often used figuratively, and especially of an underhand or unfair method of escape or evasion.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Mil.) A small opening, as in the walls of fortification, or in the bulkhead of a ship, through which small arms or other weapons may be discharged at an enemy.
- noun A hole or aperture that gives a passage, or the means of escape or evasion.
- noun An amibiguity or unintended omission in a law, rule, regulation, or contract which allows a party to circumvent the intent of the text and avoid its obligations under certain circumstances. -- used usually in a negative sense; -- distinguished from
escape clause in that the latter usually is included to deliberately allow evasion of obligation under certain specified and foreseen circumstances.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
method ofescape , especially anambiguity orexception in a rule that can beexploited in order to avoid its effect. - noun A
slit in a castle wall. Later: any similarwindow for shooting a weapon or letting in light. - verb military To prepare a
building for defense by preparing slits or holes through which to fire onattackers
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a small hole in a fortified wall; for observation or discharging weapons
- noun an ambiguity (especially one in the text of a law or contract) that makes it possible to evade a difficulty or obligation
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Corbett has rejected the term loophole, saying that in the case of gun-safety training, Florida's standards are more strict then Pennsylvania's.
Phillies Zone 2010
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Corbett has rejected the term loophole, saying that in the case of gun-safety training, Florida's standards are stricter than Pennsylvania's.
Phillies Zone 2010
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But a ferocious lobbying battle opened up … The availability of this loophole is a significant incentive for companies to invest in their overseas subsidiaries and take advantage of the tax shell game.
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If there turns out that a loophole is allowing for illegal aliens to get insurance, they can change it.
Joe Wilson – Republican – South Carolina – Professional Jackass | My[confined]Space 2009
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Right, but the loophole is the visa overstay, which is not the same as keeping out people we don't want to enter under any circumstances by denying them even a transit visa.
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That's probably what you call a loophole because it means that we can give more than most people can.
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But until we are clear what loopholes we are really talking about, the mere invocation of the word "loophole" bypasses the difficulty of getting agreement on where and how to cut.
Slate Magazine Eliot Spitzer 2011
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While we're on the resolution front, Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi introduced one asking the Department of the Environment to close what he described as a loophole in his 2007 plastic bag ban.
SFGate: Top News Stories John Coté 2010
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While we're on the resolution front, Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi introduced one asking the Department of the Environment to close what he described as a loophole in his 2007 plastic bag ban.
SFGate: Top News Stories John Coté 2010
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That provision-which I characterize as a loophole-means that the subsidy is actually more valuable to for-profit firms than to other types of employers.
US Market Commentary from Seeking Alpha Donald Marron 2010
jennarenn commented on the word loophole
It's it great how loophole has so many loops and holes? Somebody had a list for words like this....
January 20, 2008
chained_bear commented on the word loophole
In castle architecture, a vertical slit for air, light, or shooting (presumably objects) through.
August 25, 2008
ruzuzu commented on the word loophole
Why loop?
August 11, 2015
slumry commented on the word loophole
from http://www.takeourword.com/TOW120/page2.html comes this discussion of loophole:
The narrow, slit-like windows often found in Medieval castles were called loopholes. Loop is a now obsolete word for "window", so a loophole was a "window hole". These narrow windows were used for defense of the castle - it was easy to launch arrows and other projectiles out of the castle through such slits, but awfully difficult to get them in. So it would make sense that this word might come to mean "some means of escape" and then "some technicality that allows one to evade some consequence of a contract".
However, that's not where today's loophole comes from! Well, at least not directly. Instead, it has been suggested that it comes from Dutch loopgat, the loop part of which comes from loopen "to run" (related to English lope and leap). It was probably influenced by the similar word loophole "window slit", perhaps even by folk etymology of the type we tried to fool you with above.
Loophole in the "technicality that allows evasion" sense was first used by the poet Andrew Marvell in 1663.
August 11, 2015
ruzuzu commented on the word loophole
Fabulous! Thanks, slumry.
August 11, 2015