open sesame

Meanings

Phrase

• open up

Noun

• Any successful means of achieving a result, especially means that are magical or technical, or otherwise beyond the understanding of most people.

Origin

• From its use in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, translating in Antoine Galland's version of the Ali Baba story in the One Thousand and One Nights, possibly based on an oral Arabic source.
• Not, as some have purported, a corruption of Open, says me!.