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What is "loophole"

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loophole
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
loophole
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
legal
▪ Foods to boost your physique, your intelligence or your psyche are already taking advantage of this legal loophole.
▪ This legal loophole has proven lucrative for the farm giants.
■ NOUN
tax
▪ Banks are busily designing privately placed securities that exploit the many available tax loopholes.
▪ Republican lawmakers, in contrast, aim to raise only $ 18 billion by closing tax loopholes for business.
▪ Mr Clinton is also keen to close tax loopholes for foreign companies.
▪ Forbes was protesting a Clinton administration effort to close a Medicare tax loophole that benefits thousands of business partnerships.
▪ Other private placements are designed mainly for issuers, often to exploit tax loopholes.
▪ Approximately one dozen employees took advantage of this remarkable tax loophole.
▪ To crack down on tax loopholes.
■ VERB
allow
▪ They have urged the Government to tighten up the apparent loophole which allows motorists to speed.
close
▪ Visa has recently closed a loophole that let AT&T put a telephone number on its Universal cards.
▪ A good first step would be to close the loophole in that conflict-of-interest clause.
▪ Mr Clinton is also keen to close tax loopholes for foreign companies.
▪ Republican lawmakers, in contrast, aim to raise only $ 18 billion by closing tax loopholes for business.
▪ The Home Office says the changes will close a loophole to organisations such as the Literal Democrats which appear designed to confuse.
▪ To liberals, it means closing loopholes for the rich and strengthening the earned income tax credit.
▪ A rational Congress would move quickly to close the gun show loophole.
▪ Deductions would be eliminated in most cases to close loopholes and discourage the use of tax shelters.
exploit
▪ Those people are not exploiting a loophole or grabbing at a large pot of gold.
▪ And so, an Arizona-based company exploited that loophole, sending countless faxes to unsuspecting Californians.
▪ The worm exploits three security loopholes in the systems to gain root access to the server and make changes to the system.
▪ Simply hoping that governments will not exploit loopholes is stupid.
▪ Other private placements are designed mainly for issuers, often to exploit tax loopholes.
find
▪ He found loopholes in the rough, if you like.
▪ The owners set the ground rules, then they find all the loopholes to enable them to move players anyway.
▪ Many of them were lawyers employed by those companies to find loopholes in environmental protection laws.
▪ We were the slickers finding loopholes in the law to turn criminals back on the streets.
leave
▪ He gave me a faintly hurt look then, smiled and said, you must leave me some loophole.
▪ Yet since even the best laws leave loopholes, unsavory characters find ways to game the system.
▪ They are also likely to leave loopholes the size of aircraft carriers.
▪ However, Romley left a loophole in the deal by not securing in writing the promise that Carey would resign.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ He pays very little tax because of some loophole in income tax legislation.
▪ tax loopholes
▪ The new rules will close loopholes in British immigration law.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A good first step would be to close the loophole in that conflict-of-interest clause.
▪ A recently proposed federal ban on feeding animal protein to animals is encouraging, writes Rhodes, but has too many loopholes.
▪ But no party is willing to refuse to take advantage of these loopholes when the other party is doing it.
▪ The existing law is riddled with loopholes and anomalies.
▪ There was, indeed, one possible loophole.
▪ They did so simply by reading the fine print and slithering through the loophole that yawned, obvious and inviting, therein.
▪ Various ways of using this loophole are under current investigation.
▪ Visa has recently closed a loophole that let AT&T put a telephone number on its Universal cards.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Loophole

Loophole \Loop"hole`\, n.

  1. (Mil.) A small opening, as in the walls of fortification, or in the bulkhead of a ship, through which small arms or other weapons may be discharged at an enemy.

  2. A hole or aperture that gives a passage, or the means of escape or evasion.

  3. An amibiguity or unintended omission in a law, rule, regulation, or contract which allows a party to circumvent the intent of the text and avoid its obligations under certain circumstances. -- used usually in a negative sense; -- distinguished from escape clause in that the latter usually is included to deliberately allow evasion of obligation under certain specified and foreseen circumstances; as, a loophole in the law big enough to drive a truck through.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
loophole

also loop-hole, mid-15c., from Middle English loupe "opening in a wall" for shooting through or admitting light (c.1300), perhaps related to Middle Dutch lupen "to watch, peer;" + hole (n.). Figurative sense of "outlet, means of escape" is from 1660s.

Wiktionary
loophole

n. 1 A method of escape, especially an ambiguity or exception in a rule that can be exploited in order to avoid its effect. 2 A slit in a castle wall. Later: any similar window for shooting a weapon or letting in light. vb. (context military English) To prepare a building for defense by preparing slits or holes through which to fire on attackers

WordNet
loophole

  1. n. an ambiguity (especially one in the text of a law or contract) that makes it possible to evade a difficulty or obligation

  2. a small hole in a fortified wall; for observation or discharging weapons

Wikipedia
Loophole (1954 film)

Loophole is a 1954 black-and-white B-movie film noir crime drama starring Barry Sullivan and Dorothy Malone. The film was directed by former editor Harold D. Schuster. Mary Beth Hughes plays the movie's femme fatale.

Loophole (disambiguation)

A loophole is a weakness that allows a system to be circumvented.

Loophole may also refer to:

  • Arrowslit, a slit in a castle wall
  • Loophole (short story), a short science fiction story by Arthur C. Clarke
  • Loophole (1954 film), a film about a bank teller
  • Loophole (1981 film), a film about a bank robbery
  • Loophole (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit), an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
  • A minor supervillain in Superman comics
  • Mr Loophole, soubriquet given to British celebrity defence lawyer Nick Freeman
  • Loopholes in Bell test experiments, an explanation for the outcome of certain experiments
Loophole (short story)

Loophole is a science fiction short story written by Arthur C. Clarke and first published in 1946 in the magazine Astounding Science-Fiction. It was subsequently published as part of a short story collection in A Treasury of Science Fiction (Groff Conklin, 1948 and Expedition to Earth in 1953. This story details the concern of the advanced Martian civilization with humanity's research into rocketry following the discovery of atomic power. The title of this story refers to the solution humanity utilizes to overcome the threat of the Martians.

Loophole (1981 film)

Loophole is a 1981 British heist film, directed by John Quested, and starring Albert Finney, Martin Sheen, Susannah York, Jonathan Pryce, Colin Blakely and Tony Doyle. It was written by Jonathan Hales, based upon the novel by Robert Pollock. Music is by Lalo Schifrin.

Loophole

A loophole is an ambiguity or inadequacy in a system, such as a law or security, which can be used to circumvent or otherwise avoid the intent, implied or explicitly stated, of the system. Loopholes are searched for and used strategically in a variety of circumstances, including taxes, elections, politics, the criminal justice system, or in breaches of security, or a response to one's civil liberties.

Loopholes are distinct from lacunae, although the two terms are often used interchangeably. In a loophole, a law addressing a certain issue exists, but the law can be legally circumvented due to a technical defect in the said law. A lacuna, on the other hand, is a situation whereby no law exists in the first place to address that particular issue.

Historically, arrow slits were narrow vertical windows from which castle defenders launched arrows from a sheltered position, and were also referred to as "loopholes".

Thus a loophole in a law often contravenes the intent of the law without technically breaking it, much as the small slit window in a castle wall is a small opening in a seemingly impenetrable defensive measure that lets the defender gain the advantage of being able to fire without easily being fired back upon.

Loophole (album)

Loophole is the second album by Sketch Show.

Usage examples of "loophole".

There are loopholes, and a technically sophisticated adolescent will be able to defeat them.

And there are always profiteers exploiting loopholes, sneaking adware materials onto private property and then wrapping themselves up in the law.

Tunisian agribiz before coming to Loophole, my masterpiece which ended my apprenticeship to Eggplant Jackson.

The central gatehouse was flanked by two defensive towers, both of them loopholed to sweep the exterior of the gatehouse with arquebus and light artillery fire.

From the rude loophole of a window that projected from the old Cunzie Neuk, the crippled laddie could see only the shadowy tombs and the long gray wall of the two kirks, through the sunny haze.

Just then we came to a ditch about ten feet wide, and full of water, on the other side of which was a loopholed stone wall eight feet high, and with sharp flints plentifully set in mortar on the coping.

There was a row of arched loopholes or windows about four feet wide and five feet high, spaced quite symmetrically along the points of the star and at its inner angles, and with the bottoms about four feet from the glaciated surface.

Sometimes they came so close to the wall that they were hewing at the gate with their war-axes and thrusting their spears through the loopholes.

British ships long ago had proven the ineffectualness of the fixed cannons set in masonry of the loopholes of these forts.

Mostly they seem to study and take advantage of bureaucratic and jurisprudential loopholes, quite legally enabling their clients to stick it to their ex-husbands or deadbeat creditors or whomever.

I descended, minding carefully where I went for the stairs were dark, being only lit by loopholes in the heavy masonry.

Cassy had remarked the young man from her loophole in the garret, and seen him bear away the body of Tom, and observed with secret exultation, his rencontre with Legree.

I was spared the unwelcome task by none other than Queen Ullanoth, who had scried the little boys from a distance with the powerful moonstone sigil named Subtle Loophole.

Loophole sigil of late, but my ordinary scrying reveals him to be in a state of unusual excitement.

No ordinary talent is able to scry the moonstones, but her Subtle Loophole sigil can.