keep up appearances
keep up appearances verb: to artificially maintain an outward sign of normality; to maintain an appearance of wealth, comfort, or propriety.
Verb
keep up appearances (third-person singular simple present keeps up appearances, present participle keeping up appearances, simple past and past participle kept up appearances)
- To artificially maintain an outward sign of normality; to maintain an appearance of wealth, comfort, or propriety.
- For my father's sake, I thought I must keep up appearances, but the food stuck in my throat, and I could not swallow another mouthful.
- With tact and management it would be possible to partially satisfy creditors, and keep up appearances for six months more.
- Synonyms:
- maintain appearances, save appearances
Synonyms of keep up appearances
Forms of keep up appearances
| third-person singular present | keeps up appearances |
|---|---|
| present participle | keeping up appearances |
| past participle | kept up appearances |
| past | kept up appearances |
Questions about keep up appearances
- What does keep up appearances mean?
- Keep up appearances means to artificially maintain an outward sign of normality; to maintain an appearance of wealth, comfort, or propriety.
- What part of speech is keep up appearances?
- Keep up appearances is a verb.
- What is the past tense of keep up appearances?
- The past tense of keep up appearances is kept up appearances.
Words near keep up appearances in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: keep up appearances (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-keep up appearances.ogg.
Cite this entry: “keep up appearances.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/keep_up_appearances. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.