Word.ws English Dictionary

keep one's distance

keep one's distance verb: to refrain from familiarity with somebody or something; to stay aloof.

Verb

keep one's distance (third-person singular simple present keeps one's distance, present participle keeping one's distance, simple past and past participle kept one's distance)

  1. (intransitive) To refrain from familiarity with somebody or something; to stay aloof.

Forms of keep one's distance

third-person singular presentkeeps one's distance
present participlekeeping one's distance
past participlekept one's distance
pastkept one's distance

Questions about keep one's distance

What does keep one's distance mean?
Keep one's distance means to refrain from familiarity with somebody or something; to stay aloof.
What part of speech is keep one's distance?
Keep one's distance is a verb.
What is the past tense of keep one's distance?
The past tense of keep one's distance is kept one's distance.

Words near keep one's distance in the dictionary

  1. keep one's chapels
  2. keep one's chin up
  3. keep one's cool
  4. keep one's counsel
  5. keep one's countenance
  6. keep one's distance
  7. keep one's ears open
  8. keep one's end up
  9. keep one's eye in
  10. keep one's eye on the ball
  11. keep one's eyeballs peeled

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: keep one's distance (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-keep one's distance.wav.

Cite this entry: “keep one's distance.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/keep_one%27s_distance. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.