key

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key

adjective critical, crucial, decisive, fateful, influential, major, momentous, significant, weighty

key

(Passport), noun bar, pass, permit, ticket

key

(Solution), noun answer, method, resolution, way

KEY. An instrument made for shutting and opening a lock.
2. The keys of a house are considered as real estate, and descend to the heir with the inheritance. But see 5 Blackf. 417.
3. When the keys of a warehouse are delivered to a purchaser of goods locked up there, with a view of effecting a delivery of such goods, the delivery is complete. The doctrine of the civil law is the same. Dig. lib. 41, t. 1, 1. 9, Sec. 6; and lib. 18, t. 1, 1. 74.

KEY, estates. A wharf at which to land goods from, or to load them in a vessel. This word is now generally spelled Quay, from the French, quai.

References in classic literature ?

Mary, standing by the fire, saw its red light falling on the old man, propped up on his pillows and bed-rest, with his bony hand holding out the key, and the money lying on the quilt before him.

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While it was thus engaged Ghek took his spider-like way along the table to the opposite end where lay the key to the fetter.

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It cost Boxtel two days more to bring his key to perfection, with the aid of a small file.

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I know my duty -- my duty is to turn the key on you, and see Dawkes damned first.

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Tulkinghorn rubs his head with the key while she entertains herself with a sarcastic laugh.

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"Hast thou the clothes ready bundled and the key, also, to this gate to perdition?

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He drops his two keys back into his pocket one by one, and buttons them up; he takes his dinner-bundle from the chair-back on which he hung it when he came in; he distributes the weight he carries, by tying the third key up in it, as though he were an Ostrich, and liked to dine off cold iron; and he gets out of the room, deigning no word of answer.

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At last, Samuel came in, not with the keys, but with a morsel of paper for me.

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He then threw my keys into my lap, saying, - 'There!

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He got up and walked to the gate again, and "wished he had had the key about him at the time." Fanny thought she discerned in his standing there an indication of relenting, which encouraged her to another attempt, and she said, therefore, "It is a pity you should not join them.

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Keys did I carry, the rustiest of all keys; and I knew how to open with them the most creaking of all gates.

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"And here is the key, sir," said the old lady, going over the contents of her bunch with tremulously uncertain hands.