Gatekeeping

noun, verb

noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The act or process of limiting another party's participation in a collective identity or an activity, usually due to undue pettiness, resentment, selfishness, complacency, or overprotectiveness. uncountable

    "Vaginoplasty is a major surgery with significant recovery time, and patients must be medically, socially, and emotionally prepared for success. Patients sometimes express frustration at perceived gate-keeping in requiring mental health evaluation prior to surgery, something that most cis-gender patients undergoing surgery are not required to undergo."

Verb
  1. 1
    present participle and gerund of gatekeep form-of, gerund, participle, present

Example

More examples

"Vaginoplasty is a major surgery with significant recovery time, and patients must be medically, socially, and emotionally prepared for success. Patients sometimes express frustration at perceived gate-keeping in requiring mental health evaluation prior to surgery, something that most cis-gender patients undergoing surgery are not required to undergo."

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.