Meaning & use
keeping perspective
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Meanings
phrasefixed phrase
The habit of judging how important something really is, instead of letting one event or feeling fill your whole view.
Grammar: Used as a noun-like phrase: keeping perspective is difficult when you are tired.
Patterns
- have trouble keeping perspective
- keeping perspective on something
- it is worth keeping perspective
After the first bad month, the team had trouble keeping perspective and treated every small delay as a disaster.
Keeping perspective on your grades matters more than chasing one perfect score.
She is good at keeping perspective when a client complains, because she remembers the whole project.
phrasefixed phrase
The act of staying calm and reasonable about your own situation when others around you are panicking or exaggerating.
Grammar: Often follows verbs such as need or try: we need to keep perspective here.
Patterns
- try to keep perspective
- need to keep perspective
- keep perspective about something
When the rumors started, the manager tried to keep perspective and asked for the actual numbers.
It is hard to keep perspective about money when everyone else is buying a new car.
Keep perspective: one difficult week does not mean the whole plan has failed.
Common combinations
- keep a sense of perspective
- Even during the crisis, she kept a sense of perspective and slept well.
- lose perspective
- He lost perspective and spent his whole salary on one game.
- put something in perspective
- Seeing the flooded village put our own problems in perspective.
- a sense of perspective
- A good editor has a sense of perspective about which stories matter.
- keep perspective on
- It helps to keep perspective on how far you have come.
Synonyms and how they differ
- objectivity
- Objectivity means judging without personal bias; keeping perspective is broader and also includes staying calm about your own life.
- balance
- Balance suggests giving fair weight to different parts of life; keeping perspective focuses on seeing the true size of one thing.
- realism
- Realism is accepting facts as they are; keeping perspective is more about not blowing one fact out of proportion.
Opposites
Word family
- perspective noun
- A way of thinking about or viewing something, or the art of showing depth in a picture.
- perspectives noun
- Plural of perspective; different points of view.
Commonly confused: keeping perspective or perception?
keeping perspective vs perception
Perception is what you notice or how you understand something; perspective is the standpoint or the sense of proportion from which you judge it.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'keeping perspective' correctly?
Choose one answer.
'Keeping perspective' is a fixed phrase meaning staying reasonable about what matters, so it works as the subject of a sentence (option 1). The other options treat 'keeping' as an ordinary verb that takes an object, which this phrase does not do.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “keeping perspective”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.