keep tabs on
verbEtymology See tab (“tablet or slate used for keeping a record of accounts”).
1
Idiomatic To monitor; to keep track of; to watch.
- If you are careful to keep tabs on your finances, you should be able to stay within a budget.
- The police kept close tabs on him during the holidays.
4 more examples
- He might have spent the hours camped under the trees of the more remote meadow, whence in the brilliant moonlight he could keep tabs on the trails.1910, Stewart Edward White, chapter 85, in The Rules of the Game:
- I'll catch him—I'll trip him up—I'll keep tabs on his arguments.1919, Lucy Maud Montgomery, chapter 16, in Rainbow Valley:
- Syria's much feared state-security apparatus keeps close tabs on everyone entering and leaving the embassy.2010, Andrew Lee Butters, “Why the U.S. Is Back on the Road to Damascus”, in Time:
- Nadal, absent from the draw for the first time nearly two decades, said he won’t watch it all from afar, but he will be keeping tabs.2023 May 18, Christopher Clarey, “Even as He’s Out, Rafael Nadal Will Always Be a Part of the French Open”, in The New York Times: