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:
Using keyhole surgery, Theo's organs were then gently pushed back inside his abdomen, which was stitched closed.
From BBC ● Aug. 3, 2026
Doctors partially exposed his mother's womb and then gently pushed his organs back inside his abdomen using keyhole surgery.
From BBC ● Aug. 3, 2026
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
I did keep my vow not to meddle, too, except for listening at the keyhole when Granddaddy had a talk with Harry in the library a few days later.
From "The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate" by Jacqueline Kelly
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
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 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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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
