Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[shuhuang]

Hi, teachers

I came across the following sentence, "You have to learn to keep polite." It seems odd to say "keep polite." But it's perfectly normal to have the word "keep" followed by an adjective, isn't it? I can't figure out why the combination seems awkward here. Please help. Thanks.

[redset]

Yeah, you're right - we often follow keep with adjectives and continuous verbs, as a synonym for remain or continue, and sometimes nouns too (in the sense of maintain, as in 'keep the peace').

I'm not sure exactly why it sounds strange, I think it's just one of those fun aspects of English where you have to learn phrase by phrase . For example, keep quiet is fine whereas keep loud isn't. Keep warm and keep cool are good pieces of advice, but you'd never hear anyone use the more extreme keep cold or keep hot.

Honestly I think some people would use the phrase 'keep polite', and for some reason I'm hesitating in saying 'I would never use it'. Remain polite would be much more common (and viewed as correct), but I don't have any more insight as to why right now. I'll definitely think more about this.

Keep present continuous verb is always acceptable though, including keep being *state*. Keep quiet has a different meaning to keep being quiet though, so maybe there's a clue there...

[shuhuang]

Thanks or the explanation.