Word.ws English Dictionary

left the door open

left the door open is the simple past and past participle 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 left the door open

What is left the door open the simple past and past participle of?
Left the door open is the simple past and past participle of leave the door open.

Words near left the door open in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: left 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: “left the door open.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/left_the_door_open. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.