How to Use keep time in a Sentence

keep time

idiom
  • The front and rear of the car are designed to be replaced in seconds, to keep time in the pit lane to a minimum.
    Jack Fitzgerald, Car and Driver, 30 July 2022
  • After Noe died, Izzy asked her mom to find an hourglass that could be used to keep time in board games.
    Eliza Griswold, The New Yorker, 13 July 2022
  • That my inability to keep time had cost me an A.D.H.D. test was not lost on me.
    New York Times, 20 July 2021
  • Pendulums have been used in clocks, to keep time, for centuries.
    Rachelle Doorley, Parents, 16 Aug. 2023
  • But to keep time marching on, a long-term slowdown of Earth’s spin decades ago led to the introduction of the leap second in 1972.
    Tim Newcomb, Popular Mechanics, 1 Aug. 2022
  • Does the brain keep time with one set of neurons but spend it (and reward us for doing so) with another?
    Alan Burdick, Discover Magazine, 19 Aug. 2014
  • In an amapiano track, the shakers usually keep time while the log drum darts in and out of the mix, as if the beat itself is playing a solo.
    Kelefa Sanneh, The New Yorker, 14 July 2023
  • The calf playfully slapped the water’s surface with its fluke, and its mother joined in, helping keep time.
    Alex Pulaski, oregonlive, 11 Feb. 2023
  • For me, that means that the ability to keep time to music came along for the ride with another mechanism.
    Eliza Strickland, Discover Magazine, 13 Apr. 2011
  • Mellencamp later admitted that the clapping in the middle of the guitar part was done just to keep time.
    Troy L. Smith, cleveland, 13 May 2021
  • Eventually, Williams arrives to catch up and keep time with a shaker.
    Washington Post, 3 Mar. 2022
  • While Sherman-Palladino's writing moves at a breakneck pace, Midge and Susie keep time as the metronome at the series' center.
    Maureen Lee Lenker, EW.com, 11 Apr. 2023
  • Rusty Goffe, who played one of the Oompa-Loompas working in the factory, said the cast could keep time to Fosse’s popping onto the set to complain.
    Washington Post, 29 June 2021
  • Residents get together for pool parties, happy hours and swim meets, where the children compete and the parents keep time.
    Washington Post, 27 Apr. 2022
  • Diaz also told LaLima that the Fitbit itself does not keep time.
    Taylor Hartz, Hartford Courant, 2 May 2022
  • The frequency of that vibration, or how many oscillations occur in a second, is how clocks keep time, or tick.
    Katrina Miller, Wired, 19 Oct. 2021
  • Mopic/Shutterstock Entanglement could also improve the world’s best clocks, which keep time via the vibrations of atoms.
    Devin Powell, Discover Magazine, 31 May 2016
  • Because Pettiford didn't just keep time, his playing is timeless.
    Star Tribune, 5 Mar. 2021
  • Our ability to keep time is what keeps the band together, ensures dance moves are in sync with music, and even allows runners to develop an optimal gait based on steps per minute.
    Popular Science, 16 Oct. 2019
  • Behind those doors, amid the clamor, dozens of machinists and artisans conduct the process of melting and casting bronze alloy into a gleaming finished product, ready to keep time.
    James Sullivan, BostonGlobe.com, 19 Sep. 2023
  • The drum programming is mostly unchanging, just two kicks and a splat to keep time; the pianist is only slightly less reticent, spraying notes in clusters with ample space in between each.
    Elias Leight, Rolling Stone, 29 Mar. 2021
  • Proteins can also process signals and information, like circadian clock proteins which keep time in our cells, but those are a few main categories of functions that proteins carry out in the cell.
    Nathan Ahlgren, The Conversation, 13 Jan. 2021
  • The key technology here is not so much the ability to keep time but the ability to transfer this information to another location with high precision.
    The Physics Arxiv Blog, Discover Magazine, 22 July 2021
  • These names date back to earlier periods — when Native American, medieval European and other cultures turned to cycles in nature to keep time.
    Lila Seidman, Los Angeles Times, 4 Oct. 2023
  • Perhaps our modern 28-day rhythms are evolutionary leftovers, cobbled together from bits of older cellular clockwork that, in some shallow primordial sea, once helped marine worms keep time to the cycle of the moon.
    Elise Cutts, Quanta Magazine, 19 Dec. 2023
  • This draft recommendation would keep time limits in place for people taking medication to prevent HIV — due to a potential for false negatives, the agency says — and for intravenous drug users.
    Caroline Catherman, Orlando Sentinel, 2 Feb. 2023
  • Whereas grandfather clocks keep time by tracking swinging pendulums, atomic clocks monitor the quantum vibrations of atoms.
    IEEE Spectrum, 25 June 2023
  • Today, the radio measurements feed into a global bureaucracy that maintains reference frames, imposing order on space in the same way astronomical observatories used to keep time.
    Joshua Sokol, Science | AAAS, 24 Nov. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'keep time.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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