Definition of "keep on"

keep on

verb
third-person singular simple present keeps on, present participle keeping on, simple past and past participle kept on
1. (transitive, idiomatic) To persist or continue.
  Quotations
  The young woman kept on down Front Street, Warwick maintaining his distance a few rods behind her.
  1900, Charles W[addell] Chesnutt, chapter I, in The House Behind the Cedars, Boston, Mass., New York, N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company […]
2. (intransitive, idiomatic) To persist in talking about a subject to the annoyance of the listener.
3. (transitive, idiomatic) To cause or allow to remain in an existing position.
  Quotations
  The charge against Zagallo then is not so much that he started Ronaldo, but that when it should surely have been clear that the player was in no fit state to take part he kept him on.
  2010, Brian Glanville, The Story of the World Cup: The Essential Companion to South Africa 2010, London: Faber and Faber, page 361
  1. (transitive, idiomatic) To cause or allow to remain in the on or open position.