Word.ws English Dictionary

keep the home fires burning

keep the home fires burning verb: to maintain daily routine and provide the necessities of life in a home or community.

Verb

keep the home fires burning (third-person singular simple present keeps the home fires burning, present participle keeping the home fires burning, simple past and past participle kept the home fires burning)

  1. (colloquial, idiomatic) To maintain daily routine and provide the necessities of life in a home or community.
    • We got our water from a pump in the backyard and there is no domestic fatigue indoors or out-of-doors that I have not done continuously, not for fun but to keep the home fires burning.1881, Andrew Jackson Davis, The genesis and ethics of conjugal love, page 115
    • While the military has moved to gender-neutral language in all its official descriptions of the "spouses" who keep the home fires burning during deployments […]2005, Karen Houppert, Home fires burning: married to the military, for better or worse, →ISBN, page xix

Forms of keep the home fires burning

third-person singular presentkeeps the home fires burning
present participlekeeping the home fires burning
past participlekept the home fires burning
pastkept the home fires burning

Origin of keep the home fires burning

A reference to keeping campfires, lights, etc. at one's home village burning, often while part of the population travels elsewhere to hunt, etc.

Questions about keep the home fires burning

What does keep the home fires burning mean?
Keep the home fires burning means to maintain daily routine and provide the necessities of life in a home or community.
What part of speech is keep the home fires burning?
Keep the home fires burning is a verb.
What is the past tense of keep the home fires burning?
The past tense of keep the home fires burning is kept the home fires burning.

Words near keep the home fires burning in the dictionary

  1. keep the book
  2. keep the change
  3. keep the faith
  4. keep the field
  5. keep the flag flying
  6. keep the home fires burning
  7. keep the lights on
  8. keep the pace
  9. keep the peace
  10. keep the pot boiling
  11. keep the powder dry

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: keep the home fires burning (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: En-au-keep the home fires burning.ogg.

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