Word.ws English Dictionary

kept one's counsel

kept one's counsel is the simple past and past participle of keep one's counsel.

Meaning of keep one's counsel

Verb

keep one's counsel (third-person singular simple present keeps one's counsel, present participle keeping one's counsel, simple past and past participle kept one's counsel)

  1. To keep one's own business private; to be careful, circumspect, or discreet in what one says concerning one's own deeds, situation, or thoughts.
    • As he held his mother to him, he longed to tell her all, but he kept his counsel.1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, “Contains both Love and War”, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume I, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849, →OCLC, page 56
  2. To keep a secret for someone else; to be careful, circumspect, or discreet in what one says concerning someone else's deeds, situation, or thoughts.
    • Standish will keep our counsel, and the news will be old before it's known.1871–1872, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter XLIX, in Middlemarch […], volume III, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book V, page 105

Questions about kept one's counsel

What is kept one's counsel the simple past and past participle of?
Kept one's counsel is the simple past and past participle of keep one's counsel.

Words near kept one's counsel in the dictionary

  1. kept one's breath to cool one's porridge
  2. kept one's cards close to one's chest
  3. kept one's chapels
  4. kept one's chin up
  5. kept one's cool
  6. kept one's counsel
  7. kept one's countenance
  8. kept one's distance
  9. kept one's ears open
  10. kept one's end up
  11. kept one's eye on the ball

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kept one's counsel (page history and authors); keep one's counsel (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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