Word.ws English Dictionary

leaving the door open

leaving the door open is the present participle and gerund of leave the door open.

Meaning of leave the door open

Verb

leave the door open (third-person singular simple present leaves the door open, present participle leaving the door open, simple past and past participle left the door open)

  1. (idiomatic, often) To maintain the possibility of something happening in the future.
    • Federal Reserve officials raised interest rates to their highest level in 22 years and left the door open to further action as they continued their 16-month campaign to wrestle inflation lower by cooling the American economy.2023 July 26, Jeanna Smialek, “Fed Raises Rates After a Pause and Leaves Door Open to More”, in The New York Times

Questions about leaving the door open

What is leaving the door open the present participle and gerund of?
Leaving the door open is the present participle and gerund of leave the door open.

Words near leaving the door open in the dictionary

  1. leaving someone to their fate
  2. leaving someone to their own devices
  3. leaving something to be desired
  4. leaving the ball in someone's court
  5. leaving the chat
  6. leaving the door open
  7. leaving the nest
  8. leaving things alone
  9. leaving to chance
  10. leaving to the imagination
  11. leaving well alone

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: leaving the door open (page history and authors); leave the door open (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “leaving the door open.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/leaving_the_door_open. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.