Word.ws English Dictionary

lock out

lock out verb: to inadvertently prevent (a person, particularly oneself) from entering a place, by leaving it locked. Also the misspelling of lockout.

Verb

lock out (third-person singular simple present locks out, present participle locking out, simple past and past participle locked out)

  1. (transitive) To inadvertently prevent (a person, particularly oneself) from entering a place, by leaving it locked.
    • I've locked myself out of my room again!
    Antonyms:
    let in, lock in
  2. To prevent from accessing a data structure.
    • The synchronize keyword locks out all other threads trying to access the object.
  3. (transitive) (industrial) To prevent (a person, including oneself) from powering up or turning on a machine when doing so would be dangerous (accomplished with objects such as padlocks or zip ties placed through the switch handle, for example)
  4. (intransitive, transitive) (colloquial, sometimes humorous) To be unable to concentrate.
    • Bro, I am totally locked out on this assignment.

Also used as

lock out is also the misspelling of lockout.

Antonyms of lock out

Forms of lock out

Verb
third-person singular presentlocks out
present participlelocking out
past participlelocked out
pastlocked out
Noun
plurallock outs

Words formed from lock out

Questions about lock out

What does lock out mean?
Lock out means to inadvertently prevent (a person, particularly oneself) from entering a place, by leaving it locked.
What part of speech is lock out?
Lock out is a verb.
What is the past tense of lock out?
The past tense of lock out is locked out.

Words near lock out in the dictionary

  1. lock keys
  2. lock lips
  3. lock off
  4. lock offs
  5. lock on
  6. lock out
  7. lock outs
  8. lock pick
  9. lock pick gun
  10. lock pick guns
  11. lock picked

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lock out (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-lock out.wav.

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