open

UK/ˈəʊ.pən/US/ˈoʊ.pən/

verbA14 meanings One of the most common words in English · #145 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: opened, opening, opens

To open something is to move whatever was shutting it. The door swings back, the lid comes off the jam, the envelope tears along the top, the laptop lifts. Whatever was inside is now yours to get at.

Open is an adjective as much as a verb, and it travels a long way past doors: the shop is open until nine, the road is open again after the flood, the job is open to anyone with two years behind them, and an open question is one nobody has settled. It starts things — the festival opens on Friday, talks open next week — and it describes people, since somebody open keeps nothing back from you. The phrasal verbs earn their place: open up covers a shop, a wound and a person who finally begins to talk, and the kitchen opens onto the garden. One warning worth the space: in English you turn a tap on and switch a light on. You do not open them, however natural that feels.

Definitions of open

1verbopenTo move a door, lid, or cover so that a thing can be got into or passed through.A1~2%
“Open the window, it is far too warm in here.”
synonyms: unfasten, undo
2adjectiveadjNot shut — letting people or things in, out, or through.A1~80%
“The gate was open and the sheep were on the road.”
3adjectivebusinessDoing business and ready for customers.A1~2%
“The chemist is open until nine on Thursdays.”
4verbstartTo start something, or make it available to people.A2~16%
“The new library opens in March.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 140 sentences found in the wild and placed 71 of them on a sense (69 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Phrases it lives in

in the open — outdoors, or known to everybody
an open secret — something everyone knows and nobody says
keep an open mind — hold off deciding until you have heard it all
with open arms — welcoming somebody gladly and without reservation

Also practised as

adjectiveNot closed — anyone may walk in or look inside.

Where it comes from

Behind open stands the root *upo — up from under, over. The oldest thing in the word is a movement rather than a hole: a lid coming up off the top, a flap pushed up and out of the way.

Middle English
open
English, today
open

From Middle English open. Adjective from Middle English open, from Old English open (“open”), from Proto-West Germanic opan, from Proto-Germanic upanaz (“open”), from Proto-Indo-European upo (“up from under, over”). 2

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Everyday Verbs

Practise this word

open in the wild

Since the start of the Open Era of tennis in 1968, the event has been open to both amateur and professional players.
US Open (tennis)
Free-software licenses and open-source licenses have been adopted by many software packages.
Free and open-source software
OMICS Publishing Group is a predatory publisher of open access academic journals.
OMICS Publishing Group
BioMed Central (BMC) is a United Kingdom-based, for-profit scientific open access publisher that produces over 250 scientific journals.
BioMed Central
BioMed Central describes itself as the first and largest open access science publisher.
BioMed Central

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

Definitions of open

1verbopenTo move a door, lid, or cover so that a thing can be got into or passed through.A1~2%

“Open the window, it is far too warm in here.”

synonyms: unfasten, undo

2adjectiveadjNot shut — letting people or things in, out, or through.A1~80%

“The gate was open and the sheep were on the road.”

3adjectivebusinessDoing business and ready for customers.A1~2%

“The chemist is open until nine on Thursdays.”

4verbstartTo start something, or make it available to people.A2~16%

“The new library opens in March.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 140 sentences found in the wild and placed 71 of them on a sense (69 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.