Word.ws English Dictionary

gate-keep

gate-keep is the alternative form of gatekeep.

Meaning of gatekeep

Verb

gatekeep (third-person singular simple present gatekeeps, present participle gatekeeping, simple past and past participle gatekept)

  1. (transitive) To control or limit access to something.
  2. (transitive) To limit (sometimes manipulatively, rather than directly) how much of a role another party, often a spouse, has in some task.
  3. (broadly, transitive) To limit another party's participation in a collective identity or an activity, usually due to undue pettiness, resentment, or overprotectiveness.

See all 4 meanings of gatekeep

Forms of gate-keep

third-person singular presentgate-keeps
present participlegate-keeping
past participlegate-kept
pastgate-kept

Words formed from gate-keep

Questions about gate-keep

What is gate-keep the alternative form of?
Gate-keep is the alternative form of gatekeep.

Words near gate-keep in the dictionary

  1. gate-crasher
  2. gate-crashers
  3. gate-crashes
  4. gate-crashing
  5. gate-happy
  6. gate-keep
  7. gate-keeper
  8. gate-keepers
  9. gate-keeping
  10. gate-keeps
  11. gate-keepy

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gate-keep (page history and authors); gatekeep (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: “gate-keep.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gate-keep. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.