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Tending to seclude; keeping in seclusion; secluding; sequestering.

To keep secret. [Obs.] Bacon.

The office of a secretary; the place where a secretary transacts business, keeps records, etc.

One who keeps, or is intrusted with, secrets. [R.]

Tending to secrete, or to keep secret or private; as, a secretive disposition.

the years wherein we have seen evil. Ps. xc. 15. Verily, verily, I say unto you, if a man keep my saying, he shall never see death. John viii. 51. Improvement in visdom and prudence by seeing men. Locke.

Appearance; show; semblance; fair appearance; speciousness. These keep Seeming and savor all the winter long. Shak.

Watch; guard. [Obs.] "That princes do keep due sentinel." Bacon.

e toils, and death, and death's half-brother, sleep, Forms terrible to view, their sentry keep. Dryden. Sentry box, a small house or box to cover a sentinel at his post, and shelter him from the weather.

To come between; to keep apart by occupying the space between; to lie between; as, the Mediterranean Sea separates Europe and Africa.

One to whom the keeping of sequestered property is committed.

A harem; a place for keeping wives or concubines; sometimes, loosely, a place of licentious pleasure; a house of debauchery.

To keep distinct or apart; to except; to exempt. I will sever in that day the land of Goshen, in which my people dwell, that no swarms of flies shall be there. Ex. viii. 22.

To shelter or screen by intercepting the rays of light; to keep off illumination from. Milton. I went to crop the sylvan scenes, And shade our altars with their leafy greens. Dryden.

hither side of; as, on the shady side of fifty; that is, more than fifty. [Colloq.] -- To keep shady, to stay in concealment; also, to be reticent. [Slang]

g a very thin edge or fine point; of a nature to cut or pierce easily; not blunt or dull; keen. He dies upon my scimeter's sharp point. Shak.

Eager in appetite or desire of gratification; affected by keen hunger; ravenous; as, an eagle or a lion sharp-set. The town is sharp-set on new plays. Pope.

To give a keen edge or fine point to; to make sharper; as, to sharpen an ax, or the teeth of a saw.

In a sharp manner,; keenly; acutely. They are more sharply to be chastised and reformed than the rude Irish. Spenser. The soldiers were sharply assailed with wants. Hayward. You contract your eye when you would see sharply. Bacon.

The quality or condition of being sharp; keenness; acuteness.