[…] and having a fair loophole, as it were, from a broken hole in the tree, he took a sure aim, without being seen, waiting till they were within about thirty yards of the tree, so that he could not miss.
1809, Maria Edgeworth, The Absentee:
There was a loophole in this wall, to let the light in, just at the height of a person's head, who was sitting near the chimney.
1949, George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, page 25:
The sun had shifted round, and the myriad windows of the Ministry of Truth, with the light no longer shining on them, looked grim as the loopholes of a fortress.
1838, Charles Dickens, chapter 49, in Oliver Twist, page 236:
Coupling the poor girl's intelligence with my previous knowledge, and the result of our good friend's inquiries on the spot, I left him no loophole of escape, and laid bare the whole villany which by these lights became plain as day.
2002, Marc Lawrence, Two Weeks Notice (motion picture):
You have a contract that says you will work until Island Towers is finalized, which I interpret as completion of construction, or I can stop you working elsewhere. And there's no loopholes, because you drafted it and you're the best.
They would rather ask more from the vast majority of Americans and put our recovery at risk than close even a single tax loophole that benefits the wealthy.
1988, Macabee Dean, The Ashmadai Solution: A Surrealistic Extrapolation of a Gentle Genocide:
Abroad they had developed loopholing the law into an art; in Israel they jettisoned loopholing for ignoring the law wherever possible. Obeying laws was for naive fools.
2005, Deborah Rhode, David Luban, Legal Ethics Stories:
De-moralizing the subject can be, quite simply, demoralizing, as stirring statements of ideals turn into persnickety rules with exceptions crying out to be loopholed.