the.com/doorknob

means The round or lever-shaped handle you grasp and turn to open or hold shut a door.

from A plain English compound, exactly what it says: "door" (Old English duru, a cousin of the same word across the Germanic languages and ultimately tied to the Latin foris and Greek thura) plus "knob," a late-medieval word for a rounded lump or bump, probably borrowed from Low German or Middle Dutch knobbe meaning a knot or knoblike swelling. So a doorknob is, literally and unromantically, the lump on the door.