open-and-shut

Use Open-and-shut in a sentence

adjective

immediately obvious upon consideration; easily decided: an open-and-shut case of murder.

Origin:
1835–45, Americanism

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
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Collins

World English Dictionary

open-and-shut

—*adj*
	easily decided or solved; obvious: an open-and-shut case

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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00:10

Open-and-shut is always a great word to know.

So is ninnyhammer. Does it mean:

a fool or simpleton; ninny.

the offspring of a zebra and a donkey.

LEARN MORE UNUSUAL WORDS WITH WORD DYNAMO...

Example sentences

While he sat there looking calm and flattered, he was an open-and-shut case.

Even then it would be far from an open-and-shut case.

It takes a good detective to put them all together and come up with an open-and-shut case.

It's not an open-and-shut case of creative borrowing, but the resemblance is striking.

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Matching Quote

"I think the people over here are coming to realize what would happen if Germany and Italy won a European war. We would be out of the picture entirely.... If I were a German conqueror what would I do? Obviously I would have the British navy out of the way and the French army out of the way.... The first thing I would do is look around and say, "What outside territories do I want to take for myself?"... We are not quite ready to take on the United States but we can do it by indirection very nicely. We are going to dominate South America ... without violating the Monroe Doctrine. [FDR set forth a scenario of economic domination of Latin America by giving Argentina a choice of agreeing to German domination of its army by economic blackmail by virtue of the fact that Germany controlled all the agricultural markets in Europe on which Argentina depended for livelihood and the same for Brazil.] It is a perfectly open and shut thing and, if you have the complete, physical power to do it, you win.... [F]rom Hitler's point of view, it is rational. And, if any of us were in his place, with his methods, we would do it.
I made myself a hump-back, dyed my skin in several places with great spots of yellow; so that, when I look'd in the glass, I was almost frighten'd at my own figure."

-Sarah Fielding

open-and-shut

o·pen-and-shut