out of the woodwork

Idioms

Emerging from obscurity or a place of seclusion. It often is put as come (or crawl) out of the woodwork, as in The candidates for this job were coming out of the woodwork. The expression alludes to insects crawling out of the interior wooden fittings of a house, such as baseboards and moldings. [Colloquial; mid-1900s]

Example Sentences

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See Examples For:

out of the woodwork

Art dealer and presenter Philip Mould said: "What a wonderful result, I'm sure we're going to see more works by this pioneering woman artist in India coming out of the woodwork."

From BBC ● Jul. 23, 2026

Sellers are coming out of the woodwork as they notice demand from buyers creeping up.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 1, 2026

If yields move higher to compensate investors for underlying risks, it could get buyers to come out of the woodwork.

From Barron's ● Apr. 22, 2026

Meanwhile, bond buyers came out of the woodwork and pushed the long-dated yield back down again.

From MarketWatch ● Mar. 24, 2026

Sometimes he popped right out of the woodwork after only a second, and other times it might take all day to find him.

From "A Tangle of Knots" by Lisa Graff

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023