Word.ws English Dictionary

kept in

kept in is the simple past and past participle of keep in.

Meaning of keep in

Verb

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

  1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see keep, in.
  2. To require a pupil to stay after school as a punishment.
  3. To stay blazing (of a fire).
  4. To cause (a fire) to stay blazing.
  5. (obsolete) To keep a telephone call active or queued so that the operators can try the number again later.
    • 'I was speaking to Royale this morning and the exchange mentioned that one of my guests had put through a call to Paris and that there had been no answer. They wanted to know if Madame would like the call kept in. I'm afraid the matter escaped my mind. Perhaps Monsieur would mention it to Madame.'1953, Ian Fleming, “Black Patch”, in Casino Royale, London: Pan Books, published 1955, page 178

Questions about kept in

What is kept in the simple past and past participle of?
Kept in is the simple past and past participle of keep in.

Words near kept in in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kept in (page history and authors); keep in (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: “kept in.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kept_in. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.