keep
[kʰɪjp]
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: 5.66 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "to keep silence; to keep possession"
- "to keep one's word; to keep one's promise"
- "Both day and night did we keep company."
- "Within the Portal as I kept my Watch, / Swift gliding Shadows by the glimm'ring Moon, I could perceive in Forms of armed Men, / Poſſeſſ the Space that borders on the Porch— […]"
- "I keep a small stock of painkillers for emergencies."
- "I only meant to lend him the shirt at first, but it looked better on him than me, so I told him to keep it."
Etymology
From Middle English kepen (“to keep, guard, look after, watch”), from Old English cēpan (“to seize, hold, observe”), from Proto-West Germanic *kōpijan, from Proto-Germanic *kōpijaną (“to look, heed, watch, observe”) (compare West Frisian kypje (“to look”)), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵab-, *ǵāb- (“to look after”) (compare Lithuanian žẽbti (“to eat reluctantly”), Russian забо́та (zabóta, “care, worry”)). The dialectal sense of the verb meaning “to put back” or “put away” may be analyzed as a semantic loan from a local language—compare Welsh cadw and Mandarin 收 (shōu).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: [kʰɪjp]
- British English: [kiːp]
Usage
Inflected Forms
keeps (present, singular)
keeping (participle, present)
kept (participle, past)
kept (past)
no-table-tags (table tags)
glossary (inflection template)
kept (first person, past)
keepest (archaic, present)
kept (past, second person)
keptst (archaic, past)
keptest (archaic, past)
keepeth (archaic, present)