Word.ws English Dictionary

open sesames

open sesames is the plural of open sesame.

Meaning of open sesame

Noun

open sesame (plural open sesames)

  1. Any successful means of achieving a result, especially means that are magical or technical, or otherwise beyond the understanding of most people.
    • "The blue topaz was bought by me, from the chieftain of the tribe to which Quacal belongs. It is an ‘open sesame’ to his favor."1899, William Wallace Cook, “Aquastor”, in Overland Monthly, page 15

See all 2 meanings of open sesame

Questions about open sesames

What is open sesames the plural of?
Open sesames is the plural of open sesame.

Words near open sesames in the dictionary

  1. open seasons
  2. open seating
  3. open secret
  4. open secrets
  5. open sesame
  6. open sesames
  7. open set
  8. open sets
  9. open shop
  10. open shops
  11. open slather

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: open sesames (page history and authors); open sesame (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “open sesames.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/open_sesames. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.