Word.ws English Dictionary

kept one's nerve

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

Meaning of keep one's nerve

Verb

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

  1. To keep one's cool
    • There in crisp fifty-pound notes was the answer to so many of his and his father’s problems. When he thought no one was looking, Frank moved his left foot slowly forward to cover it. If he kept his nerve, he could craftily slide it out of the room.2017, David Walliams [pseudonym; David Edward Williams], Bad Dad, London: HarperCollins Children’s Books, →ISBN

Questions about kept one's nerve

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

Words near kept one's nerve in the dictionary

  1. kept one's head on one's shoulders
  2. kept one's head upon one's shoulders
  3. kept one's knickers on
  4. kept one's lips sealed
  5. kept one's mouth shut
  6. kept one's nerve
  7. kept one's nose clean
  8. kept one's options open
  9. kept one's own counsel
  10. kept one's pants on
  11. kept one's pecker up

Source and license

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

Cite this entry: “kept one's nerve.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kept_one%27s_nerve. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.