Definition of "kept" [kept]

• Past tense and past participle of keep. (verb)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Snowball, therefore, did not trouble himself to scan the sea on either side of their course; but for all that he kept the look-out enjoined on him by the sailor, -- that is, he _kept it with his ears_!"
• "I knew a man from the north who, though married to a respectable southern woman, kept two of these mulatto girls in an upper room at his store; his wife told some of her friends that he had not lodged at home for two weeks together, I have seen these two _kept misses_, as they are there called, at his store; he was afterwards stabbed in an attempt to arrest a runaway slave, and died in about ten days."
• "I believe that one-third out of the number of days in the year are “kept holy,” or rather, _kept stupid_, in honour of the saints; no great portion of the time thus set apart is spent in religious exercises, and the people don’t betake themselves to any such animating pastimes as might serve to strengthen the frame, or invigorate the mind, or exalt the taste."