keep off the streets

keep off the streets verb: to inspire or cause (someone) to avoid idleness, unemployment, poverty, or antisocial behavior.

Verb

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

(idiomatic, transitive) To inspire or cause (someone) to avoid idleness, unemployment, poverty, or antisocial behavior.
- "Dolly Nemeroff said you're a private detective in California."
  […] "It's an archaic line of work, but it keeps me off the streets."1992, Les Roberts, chapter 4, in Seeing the Elephant, →ISBN
- The Prague-born Jelinek, 32, arrived in Toronto this month to become a principal with the National Ballet of Canada. […] But he'd never have reached this point if his single mom, who died when he was 17, hadn't put him in ballet school to keep him off the streets.2010 January 10, Michael Crabb, “Former bad boy now a prince”, in Toronto Star, Canada, retrieved 09 Mar 2022

third-person singular present	keeps off the streets
present participle	keeping off the streets
past participle	kept off the streets
past	kept off the streets
alternative form	keep off the street

What does keep off the streets mean?: Keep off the streets means to inspire or cause (someone) to avoid idleness, unemployment, poverty, or antisocial behavior.
What part of speech is keep off the streets?: Keep off the streets is a verb.
What is the past tense of keep off the streets?: The past tense of keep off the streets is kept off the streets.

Adapted from Wiktionary: keep off the streets (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: “keep off the streets.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/keep_off_the_streets. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.