keyhole
Americannoun
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keyholes
plural
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a hole for inserting a key in a lock, especially one in the shape of a circle with a rectangle having a width smaller than the diameter of the circle projecting from the bottom.
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Also called key. Basketball. the area at each end of the court that is bounded by two lines extending from the end line parallel to and equidistant from the sidelines and terminating in a circle around the foul line.
adjective
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extremely private or intimate, especially with reference to information gained as if by peeping through a keyhole.
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snooping and intrusive.
a keyhole investigator.
noun
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an aperture in a door or a lock case through which a key may be passed to engage the lock mechanism
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any small aperture resembling a keyhole in shape or function
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a transient column of vapour or plasma formed during the welding or cutting of materials, using high energy beams, such as lasers
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of keyhole
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The study focuses on patients undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectomy, the standard keyhole operation to remove the gallbladder.
From BBC ● Nov. 24, 2025
For writers in the 1960s, middle-class infidelity offered a keyhole to deeper social themes—“the relation of individual to collective decadence,” the critic Wilfrid Sheed wrote of Updike’s fiction.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 31, 2025
For example, the charity said, if endometriosis was discovered during keyhole surgery the fact it had been found may not be formally recorded.
From BBC ● Oct. 28, 2025
Dressed in a revealing keyhole dress and towering beehive wig, Carpenter comes to Simon Says for the ambience and the chance to dress in drag.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 28, 2025
“I know you are,” Kira said through the keyhole.
From "Gathering Blue" by Lois Lowry
You can cover external keyholes and add a flap or brush to your letterbox, or hang a door curtain.
From BBC ● Nov. 19, 2025
So were his creations: silhouetted figures turned sky-filled voids, faces hidden behind apples or under sacks, glimpsed through windows and keyholes.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 30, 2021
There are points in space around our planet known as gravitational keyholes, wherein Earth’s pull on the asteroid sets the errant space rock on an assuredly destructive journey.
From Scientific American ● Nov. 18, 2021
I felt like a boy spying through keyholes on a ferocious world pressing closer.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 20, 2018
The remaining key Grandpa Sorenson had given her fit none of the keyholes, but the gold key she had found in the dollhouse armoire fit the bottom one.
From "Fablehaven" by Brandon Mull
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