Word.ws English Dictionary

Key West

Key West proper noun: an island in the Florida Keys, the westernmost significant cay in the archipelago.

Proper noun

Key West

  1. An island in the Florida Keys, the westernmost significant cay in the archipelago.
  2. A city, the county seat of Monroe County, Florida, United States in the Florida Keys, situated on the island of Key West and surrounding islands.
  3. An unincorporated community in Dubuque County, Iowa, United States, regarded as the key to the west.
  4. An unincorporated community in Polk County, Minnesota, United States.
  5. A subdivision in Albemarle County, Virginia, United States.
  6. A rural municipality in southern Saskatchewan, Canada, named after Key West in Florida; in full, the Rural Municipality of Key West No. 70.

Origin of Key West

Borrowed from Spanish Cayo Hueso (literally “Bone Cay”), which was coined in reference to the indigenous use of the island as a gravesite. Modified by folk etymology to Key + West as it is the westernmost inhabited island of the Florida Keys.

Questions about Key West

What does Key West mean?
Key West means an island in the Florida Keys, the westernmost significant cay in the archipelago.
What part of speech is Key West?
Key West is a proper noun.

Words near Key West in the dictionary

  1. key to the kingdom
  2. key to the midway
  3. key up
  4. key visual
  5. key visuals
  6. Key West
  7. key word
  8. key words
  9. key worker
  10. key workers
  11. key wrench

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Key West (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “Key West.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/key_west. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.