Other forms: keys
A key is the small metal thing you push into a lock and turn. Cut with teeth along one edge, worn shiny, hanging on a ring beside three others you can no longer identify.
The word spreads everywhere. A laptop has keys you press, a piano has eighty-eight of them, and a piece of music is in the key of D, which is the set of notes it lives in. A map has a key explaining its little symbols, and a test has an answer key. As an adjective it means most important: the key point, a key witness, the key difference. Sing off-key and you are missing the notes; keep something under lock and key and nobody else reaches it; a low-key evening is a quiet one.
1nounkeyA shaped piece of metal that opens and locks a lock.~2%
“He left a spare key with the neighbour.”
3nounmusicIn music, the set of notes a piece is built on.~43%
“The song changes key for the last chorus.”
4nounlistA list explaining the symbols on a map or the answers to a test.~2%
“The key at the bottom shows what each colour means.”
5adjectiveimportantMost important.~17%
“Sleep is the key difference between the two groups.”
6nounsolvesThe thing that explains or solves something.~2%
“Patience is the key to teaching a child to read.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 17 sentences found in the wild and placed 11 of them on a sense (6 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
key is a small metal tool.
Key is an old English word with almost no family. It comes from Old English caeg, which meant a key and also a solution, through Middle English keye, and its only certain cousins are the Frisian words kaai and kai. Where it came from before that nobody can say; one guess ties it to a Proto-Germanic word for a stake or post.
Middle English
keye
English, today
key
Built from
From Middle English keye. From Middle English keye, kaye, keiȝe, from Old English cǣġ (“key, solution, experiment”) (whence also Scots key and kay (“key”)), from Anglo-Frisian Proto-West Germanic kaiju, of uncertain origin. The only sure cognates are stq Koai (“key”), West Frisian kaai (“key”), and frr kai, koie (“key”). Possibly from Proto-Germanic kēgaz, kēguz (“stake, post, pole”), from Proto-Indo-European ǵogʰ-, ǵegʰ-, ǵegʰn- (“branch, stake, bush”), which would make it cognate with Middle Low German kāk (“whipping post, pillory”), and perhaps to Middle Dutch keige (“javelin, spear”) and Middle Low German keie, keige (“spear”). For the semantic development, note that medieval keys were simply long poles (ending in a hook) with which a crossbar obstructing a door from the inside could be removed from the outside, by lifting it through a hole in the door. Liberman has noted, however, "The original meaning of kaig-jo- was presumably 'pin with a twisted end.' Words with the root *kai- followed by a consonant meaning 'crooked, bent; twisted' are common only in the North Germanic languages."
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA