Word.ws English Dictionary

keeping company

keeping company is the present participle and gerund of keep company.

Meaning of keep company

Verb

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

  1. (dated, euphemistic, idiomatic, intransitive, transitive) To court.
    • It was rumoured that the lady and the gentleman were keeping company.
  2. (idiomatic, intransitive) To socialize.
    • If you care about your reputation you ought to be careful whom you keep company with.
    Synonyms:
    consort, run with

Questions about keeping company

What is keeping company the present participle and gerund of?
Keeping company is the present participle and gerund of keep company.

Words near keeping company in the dictionary

  1. keeping away
  2. keeping away from
  3. keeping back
  4. keeping body and soul together
  5. keeping cave
  6. keeping company
  7. keeping counsel
  8. keeping count
  9. keeping down
  10. keeping faith
  11. keeping from

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: keeping company (page history and authors); keep company (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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Cite this entry: “keeping company.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/keeping_company. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.