where did the term church key originate from
Churchkey The term in the beverage-opening sense is apparently not an old one; Merriam-Webster finds written attestation only since the 1950s.[8] Several etymological themes exist. The main one is that the ends of some bottle openers resemble the heads of large keys such as have traditionally been used to lock and unlock church doors.[9] The other is that jocularity helped propel the popular spread of the name, with the joke being that opening a beer is an activity that usually has little to do with pious or ecclesiastical circumstancesâ€”historical connections between monasteries and brewing notwithstanding.