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:
It will, according to Nick Card, involve "keyhole surgery" to open a small trench to investigate "this anomaly".
From BBC ● Nov. 27, 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
“Writing online in 2025 feels like performing keyhole surgery while people scream ‘ROBOT!
From Slate ● Aug. 20, 2025
Mr Tibbot said carrying out keyhole surgery on Stacey "would have been almost impossible, or would have taken the whole day of operating".
From BBC ● May 1, 2025
She pushed the keyhole cover to the side, inserted the key, and turned it left three times.
From "The Way to Rio Luna" by Zoraida Cordova
You can cover external keyholes and add a flap or brush to your letterbox, or hang a door curtain.
From BBC ● Nov. 19, 2025
These can range from cavities that look like keyholes to compressed circles to wedge shapes, which all fit smaller eyes than could same-sized round sockets.
From Scientific American ● Aug. 11, 2022
More often, though, Anolik cultivates a mood of dishy secret-sharing, in which the novels are less interesting as literary works than as keyholes to the authors’ hidden pasts.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 7, 2021
Sharpe shoots some scenes as keyholes in a black screen, as if we’re watching a play.
From New York Times ● Dec. 5, 2021
The mineralogist fits a key into a tiny, almost invisible hole on the bottom; when it turns, two more tiny keyholes open on the opposite side.
From "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
