keep

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   To continue to have something and not give it away.

   Can I keep my old stuffed animals?

2. 2
   verb

   To store something in a particular place.

   Where do you keep your gardening tools?

3. 3
   verb

   To look after or take care of something.

   He keeps chickens in the back garden.

4. 4
   verb

   To write down information regularly.

   She has kept a diary since she was ten.

Common collocations

• keep a cat Verb + noun
• keep animals Verb + noun
• keep a date Verb + noun
• keep a record Verb + noun
• keep count Verb + noun
• keep hold Verb + noun
• keep one's place Verb + noun
• keep the beat Verb + noun
• keep pace Verb + noun
• keep off Verb + preposition/particle

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).

Topics

External links

• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary
• Google Images