Keeps

How to spell keeps

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce keeps

What does keeps mean?

1. verbThird-person singular present of keep: to retain, hold on to, or continue to have something.

Keeps in a sentence

• She always keeps her receipts in a labelled folder.

• The insulated flask keeps coffee hot for hours.

Where does keeps come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the inflected form of the verb 'keep', which descends from the Old English verb 'cepan', meaning to seize, to hold onto, or to take notice of. The earliest recorded senses were closer to 'watch' and 'observe', which is why we still speak of keeping an eye on something or keeping a lookout. Over the medieval period the dominant meaning drifted toward 'retain' and 'maintain', giving the modern sense of holding on to a possession or continuing in a state. The exact pre-English ancestry is debated, since no clear relatives survive in the other Germanic languages, so etymologists treat its deeper origin as uncertain. The spelling stayed phonetic and regular, so the only thing to watch is simply adding -s, with no doubled letter or vowel change.

How the word is built

• keep (from Old English cepan: to seize, hold, observe)
• -s (third-person singular present / plural marker)