Also spelled a-keepin and kep
Meanings
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1
verb
To continue to have something and not give it away.
Can I keep my old stuffed animals?
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2
verb
To store something in a particular place.
Where do you keep your gardening tools?
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3
verb
To look after or take care of something.
He keeps chickens in the back garden.
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4
verb
To write down information regularly.
She has kept a diary since she was ten.
Thesaurus
Common collocations
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).