The Professional

LOCKSMITH

Dictionary

Copyright ã , 1982 by the ALOA Sponsored National Task Group for Certified Training Programs, Master Keying Study Group

Copyright ã , 1983 by the ALOA Sponsored National Task Group for Certified Training Programs, Master Keying Study Group

Revised June, 1984

Copyright ã , 1996 by the Lock Industry Standards and Training Council, Master Keying Study Group

Copyright ã , 1997 by the Lock Industry Standards and Training Council

Copyright ã , 2000 by the Lock Industry Standards and Training Council

Copyright ã , 2001 by the Lock Industry Standards and Training Council

Copyright ã , 2002 by the Lock Industry Standards and Training Council

Copyright ã , 2003 by the Lock Industry Standards and Training Council

Copyright ã , 2004 by the Lock Industry Standards and Training Council

Copyright ã , 2005 by the Lock Industry Standards and Training Council

Copyright ã , 2006 by the Lock Industry Standards and Training Council

Study group and LIST Council members have included: 

Jerome Andrews Jimmy Benvenutti Breck H. Camp Billy B. Edwards Jr. G.L. Finch Kristine Gallo A.J. Hoffman David J. Killip Gordon S. Morris Brian O'Dowd Lloyd Seliber John Truempy Jym Welch

Vaughan Armstrong Greg Brandt Joe Cortie Ken Ehrenreich Dorothy Friend Ray Hern Wiegand Jensen Mike Kirkpatrick Dan Nicholson Jon Payne Sharon Smith Roger Weitzenkamp

All rights reserved.

Permission is hereby granted to reprint terms and definitions contained herein with the following stipulations:

1. Any term and its definition are to be reprinted in their entirety.

2. Credit is to be given to the Lock Industry Standards and Training (LIST) Council.

In 1982 the LIST Council’s predecessor released to the industry The Professional Glossary of Terms Relating to Cylinders, Keys and Master Keying. The Associated Locksmiths of America, Inc. was the first to publish and distribute it. The definitions and terminology in the glossary have since been adopted by most of the manufacturers, publications and associations as our industry standard and many manufacturers offer a printed version as part of their factory training.

The LIST Council has been asked by ALOA and others to complete what would amount to a Dictionary for Locksmiths. We are nearly finished with that work and are pleased to submit this installment of the remaining terms that have been identified as specific to our industry.

When making a definition of a term, we applied the following rules to the term:

1. Is the term listed in "Webster"?

2. Is the definition there the same meaning used in our industry?

To us, "Webster", means a typical pocket dictionary, which could be obtained easily and on short notice from any grocery store, which has a pocket book display. If the answer to either of the questions above was no, we felt the term must be in our dictionary, otherwise it was common usage which anyone could define.

Because there is generally more than one term in use from one geographic area to another, we established the most popular term that most closely describes what it means as the "primary" term to be defined, unless it has different opposing definitions. All other terms with the same meaning become secondary terms and are only listed in the appendix. With that established, the definitions have to meet the following rules:

1. It must describe the subject of the term without graphics.

2. It must describe ONLY the subject of the term.

3. The term should not be used in the definition.

If you have a technical objection to any definition, please bring it to the attention of the publisher or a member of the LIST Council for review.  If you would like a MS Word copy of the Locksmith Dictionary it is available by right clicking here.

Copyright © 1989, 1990, 1995, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006,2007, 2008 LIST Council - Printed in USA

The following is the combined work of these two groups.

These pages last updated November, 2008

This listing of the glossary is courtesy of