Door handle: Once upon a time there was a noose...

We are all familiar with door handles. However, anyone building a house or renovating a flat is quickly confronted with terms such as door handle, door knob or handle set in the trade.
Here you can find out where the word door handle comes from and why it is no longer appropriate and should be called door handle:

The door handle is one of the linguistically interesting cases in which an old word was simply continued to be used, although the object originally designated as such no longer exists. In the Middle Ages, a door handle or "Schlinke" was a strap or "noose" that could be used to lift a bolt attached to the inside of a door from the outside by pulling on the handle. Today, the door handle is neither a strap nor is it pulled. Nevertheless, once the word became common, it passed on to the further developments of the latch: first a simple iron bolt and then a modern door handle that you push down. The modern word "door handle" or "door knob" fits the picture much better, because:

Firstly, with modern door handles or lever handles, you press it down to open the locking mechanism in a room door. Secondly, you have it in your hand when you press against a door as such to make it open. This is also true if there is a lever handle on only one side of the door and a door handle on the other, as is almost always the case with front doors: on the inside we push to unlock and from the outside we literally push the door into the house to get in. So it is only logical that the complete package with lever handle, door handle, door plate and lock is called a "lever handle set" in the trade - even if we otherwise still like to say "door handle" as if nothing had happened for 500 years.

At Griffwerk you will find lever handle sets for every interior: classic with long backplate or short backplate, with or without rosettes and with lever handles on both sides or as so-called interchangeable sets, with door handle on one side and round door handle on the other. Let our experts advise you on which lever handle set best suits your home!