housekeep

housekeep verb: to carry out the domestic duties of housekeeping.

Verb

housekeep (third-person singular simple present housekeeps, present participle housekeeping, simple past and past participle housekept)

(intransitive) To carry out the domestic duties of housekeeping.
- I would go to school, and practise, and housekeep, and club; all in their proper proportions⁠——1904, Carolyn Wells, “The Decision”, in Patty at Home, New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead & Company, →OCLC, page 24
- "I knew our week at this hotel was out to-morrow," she continued, "and we've about used up this place, anyway, and the new village that I've b'en to is the prettiest place we've seen yet; it's got an up-and-down hill to it, just like home, and the house I've partly rented is opposite a fair green...1901, Kate Douglas Wiggin, Penelope's Irish Experiences
(ambitransitive) To perform the general tasks of housekeeping.
- The clock burst which enables the supervisor to housekeep the console input and output and to change program status is currently set to 200 ms.1965, P. A. Crisman, The compatible time-sharing system: a programmer's guide, page 14

housekeep (plural housekeeps)

(archaic) The person in charge of a house; a housekeeper or innkeeper.
- The housekeep was back rather quickly with a tray, which held a flagon of ale and a pewter cup as well as bread and cheese.1993, Sharon Green, Flame of Fury, page 153
- Something clearly went wrong, for in the accounts for 1624, against the record of £50 paid to Jenninges the Housekeep at Theobalds for the setting of those Trees wch my Lord sent the king', Sackville Crowe has written in the margin that "This my Lord would not have comaunded againe though it were...2014, Jennifer Potter, Strange Blooms: The Curious Lives and Adventures of the John Tradescants

Verb
third-person singular present	housekeeps
present participle	housekeeping
past participle	housekept
past	housekept
Noun
plural	housekeeps

Back-formation from housekeeping.

What does housekeep mean?: Housekeep means to carry out the domestic duties of housekeeping.
What part of speech is housekeep?: Housekeep can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of housekeep?: The past tense of housekeep is housekept.

Adapted from Wiktionary: housekeep (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: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “housekeep.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/housekeep. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.