Open Sesame

This has come to mean an open door that unfailingly affords access or success in any endeavour and has been used in this metaphorical sense since the late 18th/early 19th century. The source is Antoine Galland (1646-1715) Les Mille et Une Nuit (The Thousand and One Nights) more commonly known in English as The Arabian Nights, a collection of traditional Arabic stories that Galland first translated into French and which were later translated into many different languages around the world. These stories were first published in the early 18th century and have been popular ever since. In the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, open sesame is the magical phrase that opens the cave where the thieves keep their treasure. Despite many theories, all unproven, no one knows what the word ‘sesame’ means. It was simply a magical incantation that opened the door to the cave in the story. Attempts to link the meaning to the sesame plant or seeds have proved fruitless.