Loophole (or murder hole’) comes from the Dutch word liupen, meaning ‘to peer’. Loopholes were a vertical slit or opening in the wall of a fortification such as a castle, allowing a defender to look out and shoot arrows or other projectiles while remaining protected. Metaphorically, therefore, the word means a gap, omission, error, ambiguity that one can exploit.
A loophole is a miswritten law or ambiguity in the law or a set of rules that allows someone to circumvent the law or a set of rules. The plural form of loophole is loopholes. Interestingly, the word loophole goes back to the sixteenth century and refers to an architectural feature. In castles of the time, narrow slits were built into the walls where archers could shoot at attackers. These narrow slits were known as loopholes, most probably derived from the Dutch word Iupen meaning to watch. The term loophole came into use in the seventeenth century in a figurative sense to mean a small opening or a outlet of escape.
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