The Professional

LOCKSMITH

Dictionary

(c)2025 by the Lock Industry Standards and Training (LIST) Council

2025 WORKING COPY

Current LIST Council Members as of this publication:

Armbruster, Josh
Brandt, Greg
DeWeese, Bobby
Edwards Jr., Billy B (1)
Hubel, John
Krucinski, Dennis
Lynk, William (2)
Mandlebaum, Bill
Moss, Jeff
Payne Sr., Jon (3)
Soderland, John
Thomas, Tyler
Winton, Wayne

Previous members of the The Study Group and LIST Council:

Andrews, Jerome
Armstrong, Vaughn
Benvenutti, Jimmy
Camp, Breck
Camper, Casey
Cortie, Joe
Ehrenreich, Ken
Finch, G.L.
Forest-Ball, Ralph
Friend, Dorothy
Gallo, Kristine
Hearn, Ray
Hoffman, A. J. (1)
Jensen, Wiegend
Killip, Dave
Kirkpatric, Mike
Morris, Gordon
Nicholson, Dan
O’Dowd, Brian
O’Shall, Don
Seliber, Lloyd
Smith, Sharon
Truempy, John
Weitzenkamp, Roger
Welch, Jym

(1)Founding Member, Historian, (2)Immediate Past Chairman, (3)2025 Chairman

Copyright ©, 1982 by the ALOA Sponsored National Task Group for Certified Training Programs, Master Keying Study Group
Copyright ©, 1983 by the ALOA Sponsored National Task Group for Certified Training
Programs, Master Keying Study Group, Revised June, 1984; Revised April, 1987; 
Copyright ©, 1996 by the Lock Industry Standards and Training Council, Master Keying Study Group 
Copyright ©, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2017, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 by the Lock Industry Standards and Training Council

All Rights Reserved

How to reprint or display this dictionary

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

  1. Terms and definitions are to be reprinted in their entirety.
  2. The following copyright statement (3) must be the first item at the top of the first page
  3. Credit is to be given to the Lock Industry Standards and Training (LIST) Council as shown below:

The Professional LOCKSMITH Dictionary
©Lock Industry Standards and Training (LIST) Council  ♦  Reprinted with Permission

About L.I.S.T.

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/Dictionary 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.

In 1991 The LIST Council was 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 store with a pocket book display or any online standard dictionary such as http://www.Dictionary.com. 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 that anyone could define. 

1) It must describe the subject of the term without graphics.
2) It must describe ONLY the subject of the term.
3) It must avoid using the term in the definition when practicable.

If you have a technical objection to any definition or for Peer Review, visit the LIST Council website at  http://www.ListCouncil.org  and use the FEEDBACK option on the top menu.

The following is the combined work of these two groups.

(dictionary starts here. . . )