To observe; heed; regard; attend to; care for; be solicitous about.To observe or carry out in practice; perform; fulfil: as, to keep the laws; to keep the sabbath-day; to keep one's word or promise.To celebrate or observe with all due formalities or rites; solemnize: as, to keep Lent.To hold; have or carry on: as, to keep court; to keep an act at a university.To tend; care for; have the charge, oversight, or custody of.To guard; protect; preserve; especially, to maintain inviolate or intact; preserve from danger, mishap, loss, decay, etc.: as, to keep the peace.To retain or hold possession of; retain in one's own power or possession; continue to have, hold, or enjoy; retain: as, he got it to keep; to keep a thing in mind; to keep a secret; to keep one's own counsel.To have habitually in stock or for sale.To have habitually in attendance or use; employ or maintain in service, or for one's use or enjoyment: as, to keep three servants; to keep a horse and carriage.To maintain; support; provide for; supply with whatever is needed.To maintain or carry on, as an establishment, institution, business, etc.; conduct; manage: as, to keep a school or a hotel; to keep shop; to keep house.To receive; go to meet; receive as a friend or guest.To take in and provide for; entertain.To hold; detain: as, what keeps him here?To hold or hold back; restrain.To continue, or continue to maintain or preserve, as a state or course of action: as, to keep the same road; to keep step.To cause to be or continue in some specified state, condition, action, or course: as, to keep the coast clear; to keep things in order.To stay or remain in; refrain from leaving: as, to keep the house; to keep one's bed.To maintain habitually: same as keep up.To scare away: same as keep off: as, to keep crows.To maintain a regular record of or in; have or take charge of entering or making entries in: as, to keep accounts; to keep the books of a firm; to keep a diary.To restrain; hold back.In printing, to set in lower-case type, as a word or initial letter.To conceal; avoid telling or disclosing.To restrain; curb, as a horse.To maintain; continue; prevent cessation of.To maintain in good order or condition: as, to pay so much a year to keep up a grave.Synonyms, etc. Keep, Retain, Reserve. Keep is a very general idiomatic word, meaning, in this relation, not to dispose of or part with; hold on to: as, to sell half and keep half. Retain covers the idea of not giving up where there is occasion or opportunity : as, to surrender on condition that the officers retain their side-arms. To reserve is to keep back at a time or in an act in which other things are given up; also, to keep back for a time: as, to reserve judgment.Keep, Defend, Protect, Shelter, Preserve. Keep is the general word in this relation also. To defend is to keep by warding off attacks; the word does not so much imply success as the others do. To protect is to keep by covering from danger. To shelter is to keep by covering on one side, or on all sides, especially above, from exposure. Shelter seems figurative when not applied to keeping from exposure to the weather, and protect and defend when not applied to the physical. To preserve is in various senses to protect or keep from destruction or injury : as, to preserve forests, the bank of a river, fruit, vested rights, life, or one's dignity.and Observe, Commemorate, etc. See celebrate.To care; be solicitous.To take care; be on the watch; be heedful.To lodge; dwell; hold one's self, as in an abiding-place.To keep one's self; remain; stay; continue: as, to keep at a distance; to keep in with some one; to keep out of sight; hence, in familiar speech, used with a present participle almost as an auxiliary of continuous or repeated action: as, he keeps moving; she kept crying out; they have kept asking for it this hour past.To last; endure; continue unimpaired.n. Heed; notice; care.n. Custody; keeping; oversight.n. That which is kept or cared for; charge.n. The stronghold or citadel of a medieval castle; the innermost and strongest structure or central tower.n. Subsistence; board and lodging; maintenance or means of subsistence: as, the keep of a horse.n. plural In coal-mining, wings, catches, or rests for holding the cage when it is brought to rest at some point, above the bottom of the shaft. See cage-shuts.n. A meat-safe.n. A large basket.n. A reservoir for fish by the side of a river.22. In printing, to save (composed type) from distribution; also, to follow rigidly the capitals or other peculiarities of (manuscript copy).In cricket, to act as stumper or wicket-keeper.n. In mech.: A cover to protect a part of a machine from injury.n. A chock; a stop; a block to prevent a piece from moving.n. On a locomotive, a part of the axle-bearing which is fitted below the journal of the axle and serves to hold an oiled pad against it to furnish constant lubrication.