door

door, gate, portal, postern, doorway, gateway are comparable chiefly as meaning an entrance to a place.

Door applies chiefly to the movable and usually swinging barrier which is set in the opening which serves as an entrance to a building or to a room or apartment in a building

{

an oak door

}

{

the front door of a house

}

Sometimes door is used also of the opening

{

children came running through the door

}

Gate may apply to an opening in a wall, fence, or enclosure but it more commonly denotes a movable and often swinging barrier (especially one made of a grating or open frame or a heavy or rough structure) set in such an opening and closed or opened at will

{

the north gate to the campus

}

{

opening the garden gate

}

Portal applies usually to an elaborate and stately door or gate, with its surrounding framework

{

the portal to the temple

}

{

the knights were admitted through the portal to the palace

}

Postern denotes a private or retired door or gate (as at the back of a castle or fortress).

Door-way and gateway apply not to the structure but to the passage when a door (in a doorway) or a gate (in a gateway) is opened for ingress or egress

{

stand in the doorway awaiting the postman

}

{

automobiles passed through the gateway in constant succession

}

In their extended use these words are still more sharply distinguished.

Door usually applies to what provides op-portunity to enter or withdraw or makes possible an entrance or exit

{

the love of books, the golden key that opens the enchanted door— Lang

}

{

I know death hath ten thousand several doors for men to take their exit— John Webster

}

Gate differs from door chiefly in its connotations of facility in admission or of entrance into something large, impressive, wide, or even infinite

{

what sweet contentments doth the soul enjoy by the senses! They are the gates and windows of its knowledge— William Drummond

}

{

to wade through slaughter to a throne and shut the gates of mercy on mankind— Gray

}

Portal often carries similar connotations, but it usually applies to a definite place or thing which is itself splendid or magnificent and through which something (as the sun at rising and at setting) is admitted or allowed exit

{

Heaven, that opened wide her blazing portals— Milton

}

{

since your name will grow with time . . . have I made the name a golden portal to my rhyme— Tennyson

}

Postern, on the other hand, implies an inconspicuous or even a hidden means of entrance or escape

{

it finds a readier way to our sympathy through a postern which we cannot help leaving sometimes on the latch, than through the ceremonious portal of classical prescription— J. R. Lowell

}

Gateway is usually preferred to doorway in figurative use because it more strongly suggests a passage through which entrance is gained to something desirable or difficult

{

the city was once more the gateway to half a continent— Harold Sinclair

}

{

the senses were regarded as gateways or avenues of knowledge— Dewey

}

Analogous words: *entrance, entry, entrée, ingress, access