keyhole

[kee-hohl]

noun

1. 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.

2. 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

1. extremely private or intimate, especially with reference to information gained as if by peeping through a keyhole.

2. snooping and intrusive.

   a keyhole investigator.

keyhole

/ ˈkiːˌhəʊl /

noun

1. an aperture in a door or a lock case through which a key may be passed to engage the lock mechanism

2. any small aperture resembling a keyhole in shape or function

3. a transient column of vapour or plasma formed during the welding or cutting of materials, using high energy beams, such as lasers

Word History and Origins

Origin of keyhole¹

First recorded in 1585–95; key ¹ + hole

Example Sentences

You can cover external keyholes and add a flap or brush to your letterbox, or hang a door curtain.

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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.

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For example, the charity said, if endometriosis was discovered during keyhole surgery the fact it had been found may not be formally recorded.

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Ms Brewster said that people can wait up to eight years for a diagnosis as it required a laparoscopy, a keyhole surgery procedure, to confirm the condition.

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Mr Tibbot said carrying out keyhole surgery on Stacey "would have been almost impossible, or would have taken the whole day of operating".

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Related Words

• break 
• crack 
• crater 
• cut 
• dent 
• gap 
• mouth 
• pit 
• pocket 
• tunnel 
• void 
• window