Never heard the term used before but looking on Google images i recognise the shape as being like the opener for a can of corned beef, i’m 28.
Minor Spoiler for an old video game
In Freddy Pharkas- Frontier Pharmacist, one puzzle involves the town being destroyed unless you can figure out how to open some beer bottles. In desperation, having tried all other objects, I tried the large, ornate key to the town church.
A few days later, a visiting friend held up the six pack he’d brought and asked “Where’s your church key?” I was pissed the universe hadn’t delivered this bit of trivia earlier.
In Doon, the parody of Frank Herbert’s Dune, Jessica is shown an unusual Swiss army knife attachment. She thinks ‘It must have religious significance.’ and guesses ‘It is the key to the church!’.
Outside of those three instances, I don’t think I’ve ever heard the expression. I’m 35.
It’s also a song by the Revels.
That is what I thought of, as well.
And to add to the demographics, in case this is a regional usage, 35, born & raised in Chicago.
Last year, I and a bunch of my friends went to Las Vegas. A dozen girls under 25, two more under 30. We had gotten a couple cans of juice to use as mixer, but forgotten an opener for the cans or for the bottles we had with us. We phoned down to reception on the off chance that they had one, and we requested a churchkey–(fourteen girls from all over North America, and yes, we all knew what it was).
Not one person on the reception staff knew what we were talking about. Not the first guy we talked to, nor his colleagues, nor any of the three people they eventually asked. We had to explain “You know, a can opener with a pointy end?” (We were privy to these conversations afterwards when they brought us up the extra towels we had requested. The nice man with the towels had a good laugh with us at the time.)
I’m forty and never heard the term. Why would they call them church keys?
This is a church key. Not a can opener, a bottle opener usually for beer bottles when beer came in brown stubby bottles without a twist top.
No, that is a bottle opener. A church key is flat metal and usually has one end configured for bottles and one end configured for cans.
My mother and father both used the term. She was born in 1928 and raised in Illinois; he in 1930 and Kentucky.
ETA: The item they were talking about is the one in silenus’ link.
I’ve always seen that thing referred to as a church key. While the bit of wire with a hole in it to open a can of corned beef LOOKS more like a key, I’ve never heard of it referred to as a key, and my grandparents used to eat that canned meat (corned beef and Spam, mostly) often enough that I was adept at using the thingy to open the cans.
I’m 42 and I know what a church key is, but only because my wife uses the phrase. I don’t recall ever using it or hearing it growing up.
To be called a “church key” the bottle opening end MUST have the loop like this one because it resembles a key such as the one being held in the hand of this friar. I’m 38 and in Canada.
Edit: Where does that image come from in general? In my mind a friar has brown robes, a bald head, a big cross around his neck, and has a key hanging from his belt. But a GIS for friar rarely includes a key.
Here is another image of a friar with a key and note the key looks like a bottle opener. It’s supposed to be Friar Tuck. What’s the deal with friars and keys?
Surprisingly, you can only find “church key” to mean a bottle opener in print from about 1951. I probably heard it from a buddy and his parents(who drank lots of beer, as opposed to my p’s) in or about 1959.
I’m 37, and my dad called the bottle opener / can opener combo (used for cans of Hi-C and fruit juices primarily) the church key from when I was a little tiny child.
Most of my friends in college knew what it was too, FWIW.
I’m 33 and I’m familiar with the term, but only in the last five years or so. When I was little and saw them actually being used (such as when my mom opened a giant can of Hi-C or what not), I had no idea what they were called.
I’m 22 and have known for several years what people mean by “church key”. Maybe it’s a deep south thing.
Yep. We also used to refer to it as a “hook opener” from the way the pointy end has the underneath part that hooks under the can rim.
Maybe you should do one of these polls on what a “Pope’s Nose” is, too.
This, except that instead of a thread on the SDMB I came across the term in the (hilarious) book National Lampoon’s Doon by Ellis Weiner, a parody of Frank Herbert’s novel Dune. The Freedmenmen (“how I loathe redundant names”) use it in a solemn ceremony to get Pall Agamemnides, the Kumquat Haagendazs, into the trance state of being “potchkied”. This last word, like “church key”, must be some kind of regional or epochal slang meaning “drunk”, and I’ve never heard or read it anywhere else either. (Same regions?)
Yes, thank you. It must have the loop type opening for bottles to be a church key.