Word.ws English Dictionary

keep one's ears open

keep one's ears open verb: to listen for important information.

Verb

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

  1. (figuratively, idiomatic) to listen for important information.

Forms of keep one's ears open

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

Questions about keep one's ears open

What does keep one's ears open mean?
Keep one's ears open means to listen for important information.
What part of speech is keep one's ears open?
Keep one's ears open is a verb.
What is the past tense of keep one's ears open?
The past tense of keep one's ears open is kept one's ears open.

Words near keep one's ears open in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: keep one's ears open (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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