Word.ws English Dictionary

kept the home fires burning

kept the home fires burning is the simple past and past participle of keep the home fires burning.

Meaning of keep the home fires burning

Verb

keep the home fires burning (third-person singular simple present keeps the home fires burning, present participle keeping the home fires burning, simple past and past participle kept the home fires burning)

  1. (colloquial, idiomatic) To maintain daily routine and provide the necessities of life in a home or community.
    • We got our water from a pump in the backyard and there is no domestic fatigue indoors or out-of-doors that I have not done continuously, not for fun but to keep the home fires burning.1881, Andrew Jackson Davis, The genesis and ethics of conjugal love, page 115

Questions about kept the home fires burning

What is kept the home fires burning the simple past and past participle of?
Kept the home fires burning is the simple past and past participle of keep the home fires burning.

Words near kept the home fires burning in the dictionary

  1. kept the baby
  2. kept the ball rolling
  3. kept the book
  4. kept the field
  5. kept the flag flying
  6. kept the home fires burning
  7. kept the lights on
  8. kept the pace
  9. kept the peace
  10. kept the pot boiling
  11. kept the powder dry

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kept the home fires burning (page history and authors); keep the home fires burning (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 the home fires burning.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kept_the_home_fires_burning. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.