Word.ws English Dictionary

keep under

keep under verb: to hold in subjection; hence, to oppress.

Verb

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

  1. (transitive) To hold in subjection; hence, to oppress.
    • In many places the local contingents of the army of “three million beggars” were regarded simply as animals to be kept under and exploited […]1956, Carlile Aylmer Macartney, October Fifteenth: A History of Modern Hungary, 1929–1945, volume 1, page 68

Forms of keep under

third-person singular presentkeeps under
present participlekeeping under
past participlekept under
pastkept under

Questions about keep under

What does keep under mean?
Keep under means to hold in subjection; hence, to oppress.
What part of speech is keep under?
Keep under is a verb.
What is the past tense of keep under?
The past tense of keep under is kept under.

Words near keep under in the dictionary

  1. keep to one's own knitting
  2. keep to oneself
  3. keep together
  4. keep track
  5. keep tryst
  6. keep under
  7. keep up
  8. keep up appearances
  9. keep up with
  10. keep up with the Joneses
  11. keep up with the times

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: keep under (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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