Past tense of keep
irregular verb
The past tense of keep is kept. The past participle is also kept.
Forms of keep
| Base form (V1) | keep /kiːp/ |
|---|---|
| Past tense (V2) | kept /ˈkɛpt/ |
| Past participle (V3) | kept /ˈkɛpt/ |
| Present participle | keeping /ˈkiːpɪŋ/ |
| Third person singular | keeps /kiːps/ |
Kept in a sentence
- The abundance of squirrels kept the dogs running for hours.
- She mixed furniture with the same fatal profligacy as she mixed drinks, and this outrageous contact between things which were intended by Nature to be kept poles apart gave her an inexpressible thrill.1935, George Goodchild, chapter 1, in Death on the Centre Court
- The man in the next bunk kept me awake all night with his snoring.From the entry next
- The dancer kept pace with the shifting tempo of the music.From the entry tempo
- The kerosene lasted all winter, so the furnace kept us always warm.From the entry kerosene
Meaning of keep
- verb To continue in (a course or mode of action); to not intermit or fall from; to uphold or maintain.
- verb To remain faithful to a given promise or word.
- verb To maintain possession of.
Verbs like keep
Questions about the past tense of keep
- What is the past tense of keep?
- The past tense of keep is kept.
- What is the past participle of keep?
- The past participle of keep is kept.
- Is keep a regular or irregular verb?
- Keep is an irregular verb: its past tense is not formed with -ed.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: keep (page history and authors) and the entries of its forms. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws left out forms marked obsolete, archaic, rare or dialectal and added the examples. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this page: “Past tense of keep.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past-tense/keep. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.