Unlocking
noun, verb ·3 syllables ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 gerund of unlock: the act by which something is unlocked. form-of, gerund
"She had heard him, more than once, lock something up in one of the rooms—come out, and go into another room—wait there a few minutes—then return to the first room, with his keys in hand—and sharply turn the locks, and turn them again. […] [I]t was just as probable that these comings and goings, these lockings and unlockings, might be attributable to the existence of some private responsibility, which had unexpectedly intruded itself into the old man's easy existence, and which tormented him with a sense of oppression, new to the experience of his later years."
- 1 present participle and gerund of unlock form-of, gerund, participle, present
Example
More examples"Security experts believe Apple’s fingerprint scanning technology senses whether a digit is attached to a living human, so severed phalanges should prove unsuccessful for unlocking a stolen iPhone."
Etymology
From unlock + -ing.
More for "unlocking"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.