Word.ws English Dictionary

keep one's guard up

keep one's guard up verb: to be careful and alert to the possibility of danger.

Verb

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

  1. To be careful and alert to the possibility of danger.
    Synonyms:
    have one's guard up, be on one's guard

Synonyms of keep one's guard up

Antonyms

Forms of keep one's guard up

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

Questions about keep one's guard up

What does keep one's guard up mean?
Keep one's guard up means to be careful and alert to the possibility of danger.
What part of speech is keep one's guard up?
Keep one's guard up is a verb.
What is the past tense of keep one's guard up?
The past tense of keep one's guard up is kept one's guard up.

Words near keep one's guard up in the dictionary

  1. keep one's eyes on the ball
  2. keep one's eyes open
  3. keep one's eyes peeled
  4. keep one's eyes skinned
  5. keep one's fingers crossed
  6. keep one's guard up
  7. keep one's hair on
  8. keep one's hand in
  9. keep one's hands to oneself
  10. keep one's head
  11. keep one's head above the water

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: keep one's guard up (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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