Edited by Richard Walker, Tuesday 2 December 2025 at 22:51
This was one of the first jokes I ever heard, in my infant school days.
When is a door not a door?
When it's ajar!
Yesterday I suddenly wondered, don't know why, where "ajar" comes from and what other things , if any, can be ajar (apart from a jar obviously).
The OED gives the definition "
Of a door, gate, or window: so as to be slightly or partially open.
It can apply to anything that closes off a space, so long as it's got hinges. The last bit is important, at least historically, because the original form was on char, where char means something like "turn". In Old English it was spelt in variety of ways, e.g. cyrre, chere, and referred at first to time "coming round". The meaning was extended to something physically turning; the OED gives this example from 1510
The dure on chare it stude.¶
So there we have our door. The meaning was then extended further to something like a "turn of work" — compare ways turn is used; take turns, it's your turn, etc. — and changed its spelling to chore, a piece of work that needs to be done. And so ajar and chore are related words, rather surprisingly.
But chare has left a fossil trace in the language, charwoman.
When Is A Door Not A Door? (Revisited)
This was one of the first jokes I ever heard, in my infant school days.
Yesterday I suddenly wondered, don't know why, where "ajar" comes from and what other things , if any, can be ajar (apart from a jar obviously).
The OED gives the definition "
Of a door, gate, or window: so as to be slightly or partially open.
It can apply to anything that closes off a space, so long as it's got hinges. The last bit is important, at least historically, because the original form was on char, where char means something like "turn". In Old English it was spelt in variety of ways, e.g. cyrre, chere, and referred at first to time "coming round". The meaning was extended to something physically turning; the OED gives this example from 1510
So there we have our door. The meaning was then extended further to something like a "turn of work" — compare ways turn is used; take turns, it's your turn, etc. — and changed its spelling to chore, a piece of work that needs to be done. And so ajar and chore are related words, rather surprisingly.
But chare has left a fossil trace in the language, charwoman.
¶ Gavin Douglas, King Hart