Word.ws English Dictionary

keep a close watch

keep a close watch verb: to pay careful attention to a situation or a thing, so that you can deal with any changes or problems.

Verb

keep a close watch (third-person singular simple present keeps a close watch, present participle keeping a close watch, simple past and past participle kept a close watch)

  1. (idiomatic) To pay careful attention to a situation or a thing, so that you can deal with any changes or problems.
    • The prime minister asked the home secretary to keep a close watch on the flooding situation.

Forms of keep a close watch

third-person singular presentkeeps a close watch
present participlekeeping a close watch
past participlekept a close watch
pastkept a close watch

Questions about keep a close watch

What does keep a close watch mean?
Keep a close watch means to pay careful attention to a situation or a thing, so that you can deal with any changes or problems.
What part of speech is keep a close watch?
Keep a close watch is a verb.
What is the past tense of keep a close watch?
The past tense of keep a close watch is kept a close watch.

Words near keep a close watch in the dictionary

  1. Keenums
  2. keep
  3. keep a civil tongue
  4. keep a civil tongue in one's head
  5. keep a civil tongue in one's mouth
  6. keep a close watch
  7. keep a cool head
  8. keep a dog and bark oneself
  9. keep a lid on
  10. keep a look-out
  11. keep a lookout

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: keep a close watch (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-keep a close watch.ogg.

Cite this entry: “keep a close watch.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/keep_a_close_watch. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.