keep to oneself

keep to oneself verb: to purposely avoid interaction with others; to be introverted.

Verb

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

(intransitive) To purposely avoid interaction with others; to be introverted.
- She preferred to keep to herself after her husband died.
- I've done no harm, I keep to myself / There's nothing wrong with my state of mental health1981, Men at Work, “Who Can It Be Now?”, in Business as Usual
Synonyms:

keep oneself to oneself
(transitive) To refrain from telling or giving; to keep secret, or refuse to share.
- keep oneself to oneself
- Then he fell to gabbling strange and dreadful things which were not clearly understandable, and which the doctor admonished them to keep to themselves.1900, Mark Twain, chapter IV, in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

third-person singular present	keeps to oneself
present participle	keeping to oneself
past participle	kept to oneself
past	kept to oneself

What does keep to oneself mean?: Keep to oneself means to purposely avoid interaction with others; to be introverted.
What is keep to oneself in Urdu?: Keep to oneself in Urdu is اپنے ہی تک رکھنا (apne hī tak rakhnā). See Keep to oneself meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is keep to oneself?: Keep to oneself is a verb.
What is the past tense of keep to oneself?: The past tense of keep to oneself is kept to oneself.

Adapted from Wiktionary: keep to oneself (page history and authors); اپنے ہی تک رکھنا (Urdu) (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

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