Ream

ream
verb, transitive. To widen a bore or hole with a special tool. To clear out or remove material from something. Informally, to rebuke or criticize someone fiercely. Also a noun.

"Who do you think did this?" Patrick queried as he bent to look at the latch-hole in the door jamb.

"I have no way of telling," Mike replied, "but I'm thinking about getting one of those little surveillance cameras and setting it up so that, if it happens again, I'll have evidence."

"I know it's troubling, knowing that someone was in here while you were at work, watching your TV, going through your stuff...."

Mike agreed without saying so. He watched as his landlord, who he considered his friend, patiently reamed splintered wood out of the latch-hole with a chisel and his finger, then studied the hole. Patrick shook his head.

"Too much material is gone. We'll have to drill a new hole, and put the new lock in a different place."

Patrick left to get more tools. Mike stayed in the hallway, swinging the door to and fro and noting how flimsy it felt. When the garage had been converted into an apartment, Patrick hadn't anticipated that anyone would ever gain entrance to the hallway via the door to the outside, then kick in the apartment's door so easily. He wondered if a new deadbolt would do any good. Maybe the door itself should be replaced with a solid-core one. He decided to propose that when Patrick returned. For four-hundred dollars a month, he wanted to feel secure in his own home. Surely his landlord would agree.

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.