Lock-in

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A sleepover party, usually held in a public place such as a church or school, in which the participants are not allowed to leave until the next morning. US

    "The youth group will have their annual lock-in this weekend."

  2. 2
    An illegal but widely-tolerated invitation-only gathering in a British pub, after the end of licensing hours, to allow regular customers the opportunity to enjoy further drinking time. Ireland, UK

    "He was a lunatic drunk and started sing songs that lasted into the early hours of the morning and resulted in many weekend lock-ins in the village pub."

  3. 3
    A situation in which members of an industry have agreed to adopt a certain standard and have retooled their production to meet this standard, thus making it very costly to change to a different standard.

    "vendor lock-in"

  4. 4
    The situation where an investor cannot trade without incurring an undesirable penalty such as taxation.

Example

More examples

"The youth group will have their annual lock-in this weekend."

Etymology

Deverbal from lock in.

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