keyhole
Americannoun
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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
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.
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
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
A nurse has become the first person in the UK to undergo an operation that saw a tumour removed through her eye socket using keyhole surgery.
From BBC • Jan. 20, 2025
Spending his first months in office squeezing Gaetz and his ethics reports through a keyhole wasn’t worth the effort when a friendly neighborhood Pam Bondi was available.
From Slate • Dec. 4, 2024
There was a keyhole in the very center of the door, and directly above it, three words were etched into the door’s glittering, faceted surface: CHARITY.
From "Ready Player One: A Novel" by Ernest Cline
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.
