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:
Grace has recently had a laparoscopy - keyhole surgery - to remove her endometriosis.
From BBC ● Aug. 23, 2026
Stoppard announced himself with “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” an absurdist lark that views “Hamlet” from the keyhole perspective of two courtiers jockeying for position in the new regime.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 30, 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
He had four tiny scars in his eye where healthy copies of the gene were injected into the retina at the back of the eye through keyhole surgery.
From BBC ● Feb. 20, 2025
Somebody had stuck gum in my padlock keyhole.
From "Burning Blue" by Paul Griffin
You can cover external keyholes and add a flap or brush to your letterbox, or hang a door curtain.
From BBC ● Nov. 19, 2025
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
Several split in the middle, leaving gaping shapes that framed the disaster like keyholes into a broken world.
From New York Times ● May 1, 2020
Entering the Moongate Garden requires walking through one of two nine-foot-tall pink granite “moongates,” which resemble keyholes to another world.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 24, 2019
The vault had a five-spoke wheel that controlled the dead bolts and two keyholes on either side of the handle.
From "The Reader" by Traci Chee
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.
