doorstop

• doorstopper

door +‎ stop

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Audio (US)

  (file)

doorstop (plural doorstops)

1. Any device or object used to halt the motion of a door, as a large or heavy object, a wedge, or some piece of hardware fixed to the floor, door or wall.
2. (humorous) A large book, which by implication could be used to stop a door.
   • 2010, Jack Hitt, “Is Sarah Palin Porn?”, in Laura Flanders, editor, At The Tea Party: The Wing Nuts, Whack Jobs and Whitey-Whiteness of the New Republican Right... and Why We Should Take It Seriously, page 206:

     Meanwhile, all the Democrats had to put forward that year was a doorstop called Man of the House: The Life and Political Memoirs of Speaker Tip O'Neill.

   • 2023 September 13, Gary Shteyngart, “Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson review – arrested development”, in The Guardian‎, →ISSN:

     Walter Isaacson’s insight-free doorstop makes at least one thing clear: the richest man in the world has a lot of growing up to do[.]

3. (British, proscribed, nonstandard) (in error for doorstep) A thick sandwich.
4. (Australia) An interview with a politician or other public figure (apparently informal or spontaneous but often planned), as they enter or leave a building.
   • 2005, Mark Latham, The Latham Diaries‎, page 106:

     And television dominates this place — just look at Beazley tossing around cans of tomato soup at his morning doorstops outside Parliament House.

   • 2006, Troy Bramston, The Wran Era‎, page 244:

     The six o′clock news was regarded as the pivotal point in the day. As the news was beginning, often the Premier would make himself available for a doorstop press conference.

   • 2010, Anne Tiernan, Patrick Weller, Learning to Be a Minister: Heroic Expectations, Practical Realities, page 218:

     It was estimated, for example, that Treasurer Wayne Swan had given more than 250 interviews and doorstops by the end of his first year in office.

• doorpost