Word.ws English Dictionary

keeping house

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

Meaning of keep house

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To take care of domestic chores; work as a housekeeper.
    • So I went to keep house with him at the Why Not? and my aunt sent down my bag of clothes, and would have made over to Elzevir the pittance that my father left for my keep, but he said it was not needful, and he would have none of it.[1898], J[ohn] Meade Falkner, Moonfleet, London; Toronto, Ont.: Jonathan Cape, published 1934, →OCLC
  2. To seclude oneself in one's house in order to evade the demands of creditors.
    Synonyms:
    knead

Questions about keeping house

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

Words near keeping house in the dictionary

  1. keeping down
  2. keeping faith
  3. keeping from
  4. keeping going
  5. keeping good time
  6. keeping house
  7. keeping in
  8. keeping in mind
  9. keeping in with
  10. keeping it 100
  11. keeping it a bean

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: keeping house (page history and authors); keep house (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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