keep in
Definition
- Verb (transitive):
- To cause someone or something to remain inside a particular place or area: The action of making a person, animal, or object stay indoors or within a confined space.
- To restrain or confine: To prevent someone from going outside, often for a specific reason such as discipline, safety, or health.
Usage Examples
- Verb:
- The heavy rain forced us to keep the children in all afternoon. (The bad weather was the reason we made the children stay indoors.)
- Please keep the cat in tonight; there's a storm coming. (This is an instruction to ensure the cat remains inside the house.)
- The teacher kept the student in after class for misbehaving. (The teacher made the student stay inside the classroom as a form of detention.)
Advanced Usage
- "to keep one's emotions in": This is a figurative extension meaning to restrain or suppress one's feelings, not to let them show. It is related to the core idea of confinement but applied abstractly.
- During the meeting, he had to keep his anger in to remain professional. (He had to suppress his anger.)
Variants and Related Words
- Keep-in (noun, hyphenated): A rare nominal form referring to an instance of being kept indoors, such as a school detention.
- He got a keep-in for talking back to the teacher.
- Indoor (adjective): Located, done, or used inside a building.
- Indoor activities
- Confine (verb): To keep or restrict someone or something within certain limits.
- Detain (verb): To keep someone in official custody, often for a short time.
Synonyms
- Confine: To keep within bounds; restrict.
- Restrain: To prevent from doing something; keep under control.
- Detain: To keep from proceeding; delay.
- Shut in: To confine within an enclosed area.
Related Phrasal Verbs
- Keep down: To suppress or control (e.g., ). Shares the concept of restraint.
- Keep back: To hold something or someone back, to not advance. (e.g., )
- Keep under: To keep someone in a state of subjection or control.
Related Idioms
- Keep a tight rein on: To control something or someone very strictly. This idiom relates to the control aspect of "keep in."
- The manager keeps a tight rein on the department's budget.
- Bottle up: To refuse to express strong emotions. Similar to the figurative use "keep one's emotions in."
- Don't bottle up your feelings; it's not healthy.
Verb
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cause to stay indoors
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