keywords

Language: en

🇬🇧 /ˈkiˌːwɜːdz/ 🇺🇸 /ˈkiːˌwɜrdz/

📖 Definitions

  1. noun
    Words or phrases that capture the essential content or main topics of a text, document, or subject, often used for indexing, searching, or categorization purposes.; In information retrieval and search engine optimization, terms or phrases entered by users into a search engine to find relevant content.; In programming, reserved words that have special syntactic meaning and cannot be used as identifiers for variables, functions, or other user-defined elements.; In library science and database management, controlled vocabulary terms assigned to a record to describe its subject matter and facilitate retrieval.; In cryptography and security, secret words or codes used for authentication or access control.; In advertising and media, terms that trigger specific responses or are associated with particular brands, campaigns, or target audiences.

🔗 Details

Word forms

countable Plural: keywords 3rd sing.: keywords Past: keyworded Past part.: keyworded Pres part.: keywording

Collocations

keyword searchkeyword researchkeyword densitykeyword optimizationkeyword stuffingkeyword analysis

Derivatives

keywordedkeywording

Synonyms

search termtagdescriptorindex termkey term

Commonly confused

key word
EN: 'keyword' is written as one word in modern usage; 'key word' (two words) is an older or informal variant that is now generally considered nonstandard.

Spelling tips

EN: Write 'keyword' as one word, not two ('key word'). The compound has been fully lexicalized in modern English.

💬 Examples

  1. The researcher added five keywords to the abstract of her academic paper to improve discoverability.

  2. The marketing team conducted keyword research to determine which terms potential customers were using to find similar products online.

  3. In Python, 'if', 'else', 'for', and 'while' are keywords that cannot be used as variable names.

  4. The librarian assigned standardized keywords from the thesaurus to each new catalog entry.

  5. The spy was instructed to use the keyword 'nightingale' to identify friendly agents at the rendezvous point.

  6. The ad campaign was designed around keywords that resonated with environmentally conscious consumers.