the.com/wicket gate
The small door inside the big door, for people too impatient to open the whole thing.
means A small gate or door built into (or beside) a larger gate or door, sized for a person rather than a cart, carriage, or crowd.
from 'Wicket' comes from Old Norse or Old French roots (via Anglo-Norman 'wiket'), originally meaning a small door or opening set within a larger one — the same root that later gave cricket its 'wicket,' the small target stumps. 'Wicket gate' is simply the fuller, clarifying form of that old word, used for farm gates, garden gates, and lock-gates alike: the little door for foot traffic, cut into the big one made for everything else.
- origin
- named after cricket's wicket gate shape, not sport itself
- found in
- castle gates, canal locks, garden walls
- purpose
- lets one person through without swinging the main gate
- bonus use
- canal locks use it to control water flow