Word.ws English Dictionary

keep body and soul together

keep body and soul together verb: of a person: to survive; to continue living.

Verb

keep body and soul together (third-person singular simple present keeps body and soul together, present participle keeping body and soul together, simple past and past participle kept body and soul together)

  1. Of a person: to survive; to continue living.
    • How did you keep body and soul together before you got your first paying job as an actor?
    • Trout lives in a rented basement in Ilium, about two miles from Billy’s nice white home. He himself has no idea how many novels he has written—possibly seventy-five of the things. Not one of them has made money. So Trout keeps body and soul together as a circulation man for the Ilium Gazette...1969 March 31, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five […] (A Seymour Lawrence Book), New York, N.Y.: Delacorte Press, →OCLC, page 142

Forms of keep body and soul together

third-person singular presentkeeps body and soul together
present participlekeeping body and soul together
past participlekept body and soul together
pastkept body and soul together
alternative formkeep soul and body together

Questions about keep body and soul together

What does keep body and soul together mean?
Keep body and soul together means of a person: to survive; to continue living.
What part of speech is keep body and soul together?
Keep body and soul together is a verb.
What is the past tense of keep body and soul together?
The past tense of keep body and soul together is kept body and soul together.

Words near keep body and soul together in the dictionary

  1. keep at
  2. keep at arm's length
  3. keep away
  4. keep away from
  5. keep back
  6. keep body and soul together
  7. keep cave
  8. keep company
  9. keep counsel
  10. keep count
  11. keep cup

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: keep body and soul together (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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