Word.ws English Dictionary

slam door

slam door noun: a hinged railway carriage door which opened outwards, that could be opened from the inside only by opening the window and turning the handle on the outside. They originated on carriages with compartments and no corridors, and persisted on later carriage designs with corridors on one side of the compartments, being fitted on the non-corridor side.

slam door: a hinged railway carriage door which opened outwards, that could be opened from the inside only by...
Image: Geof Sheppard, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

slam door (plural slam doors)

  1. (UK, dated) A hinged railway carriage door which opened outwards, that could be opened from the inside only by opening the window and turning the handle on the outside. They originated on carriages with compartments and no corridors, and persisted on later carriage designs with corridors on one side of the compartments, being fitted on the non-corridor side.
    • In the early 1970s, the Southern Region was also reporting around 1,500 incidents each year caused by passengers opening slam doors - including a dozen deaths and other injuries caused by falling from trains, either in stations or on the move.2023 February 22, Howard Johnston, “Southern '313s': is the end now in sight?”, in RAIL, number 977, page 41

Forms of slam door

pluralslam doors

Questions about slam door

What does slam door mean?
Slam door means a hinged railway carriage door which opened outwards, that could be opened from the inside only by opening the window and turning the handle on the outside. They originated on carriages with compartments and no corridors, and persisted on later carriage designs with corridors on one side of the compartments, being fitted on the non-corridor side.
What part of speech is slam door?
Slam door is a noun.
What is the plural of slam door?
The plural of slam door is slam doors.

Words near slam door in the dictionary

  1. slam dance
  2. slam danced
  3. slam dancer
  4. slam dances
  5. slam dancing
  6. slam door
  7. slam doors
  8. slam down
  9. slam dunk
  10. slam dunk approach
  11. slam dunk approaches

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: slam door (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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