keep tabs on

keep tabs on verb: to monitor; to keep track of; to watch.

Verb

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

(idiomatic) To monitor; to keep track of; to watch.
- If you are careful to keep tabs on your finances, you should be able to stay within a budget.
- The police kept close tabs on him during the holidays.

He might have spent the hours camped under the trees of the more remote meadow, whence in the brilliant moonlight he could keep tabs on the trails.1910, Stewart Edward White, chapter 85, in The Rules of the Game:
I'll catch him—I'll trip him up—I'll keep tabs on his arguments.1919, Lucy Maud Montgomery, chapter 16, in Rainbow Valley:

third-person singular present	keeps tabs on
present participle	keeping tabs on
past participle	kept tabs on
past	kept tabs on

See tab (“tablet or slate used for keeping a record of accounts”).

What does keep tabs on mean?: Keep tabs on means to monitor; to keep track of; to watch.
How do you use keep tabs on in a sentence?: He might have spent the hours camped under the trees of the more remote meadow, whence in the brilliant moonlight he could keep tabs on the trails.
What part of speech is keep tabs on?: Keep tabs on is a verb.
What is the past tense of keep tabs on?: The past tense of keep tabs on is kept tabs on.

Adapted from Wiktionary: keep tabs on (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

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-keep tabs on.ogg.

Cite this entry: “keep tabs on.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/keep_tabs_on. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.