Word.ws English Dictionary

keep cave

/kiːp ˈkeɪvi/

keep cave verb: to maintain vigilance.

Verb

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

  1. (UK, school slang) To maintain vigilance.
    • I vote we go down and explore. No one will come up this time o' day. We needn't keep cavé.1899 January, Rudyard Kipling, “An Unsavoury Interlude”, in Stalky & Co., London: Macmillan & Co., published 1899, →OCLC, page 73
    • I'll keep cave for ten minutes.1911, Cosmo Hamilton, “Why Cupid Came to Earl’s Court”, in Short Plays for Small Stages, page 9

Synonyms of keep cave

Forms of keep cave

third-person singular presentkeeps cave
present participlekeeping cave
past participlekept cave
pastkept cave

Origin of keep cave

Used in Southern England. See cave (“look out, beware”).

Questions about keep cave

What does keep cave mean?
Keep cave means to maintain vigilance.
What part of speech is keep cave?
Keep cave is a verb.
How do you pronounce keep cave?
Keep cave is pronounced /kiːp ˈkeɪvi/.
What is the past tense of keep cave?
The past tense of keep cave is kept cave.

Words near keep cave in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: keep cave (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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