Keep your promise vs Keep to your promise

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
1

What is the difference b/w the following two?

  1. Keep your promise
  2. Keep to your promise

Thank you! :wink:

2

Hi

In my opinion, we keep our promise, we honour our promise, we fulfill our promise, but we do not keep to our promise.

We also break our promise, go back on our promise and extract a promise from someone.

I hope this helps a bit.

Tom

3

Hi

Tom’s examples were good, but I’m afraid I’m going to disagree with him a little bit about “keep to”. :wink:

While it is more common or “standard” to say “keep your promise”, saying “keep to your promise” would also be OK in certain situations. For example, in a situation where you want to talk about a promise very precisely or exactly. In other words, a very strict adherence to all the details of the promise.

It might be in a situation where a person is more or less already keeping his promise, but not 100%. Maybe he’s been leaving out some of the details or has started to stray from keeping his promise. So you might have to remind him to keep to his promise with regard to this detail or that detail.

Amy

4

Hi,

I’m not really sold on keep to your promise. Keep your promise would be my preference. If you’re determined to stress the idea of adherence, then I would say; Stick to your promise

Not wishing to sound stuck up

Alan

5

Hi Alan

I agree with you there. Stick to your promise would certainly be more common.

Amy

6

Hi, thank you for all of you for answering my question!

I just ran into the expression “keep to ~” on my dictionary
and this was the first time I had seen.
I was wondering how this “to” functioned and if it made the meaning
different from other without “to”.

I’ve got the point.
“to” make a sense of reconfirmation, emphasis or sometimes adds a little sense of accusation,
so maybe I shouldn’t use it and had better to “stick to the standard way”. :wink:

Thank you again and have a nice day!

Phoo

7

Hey, Amy! :smiley:

Very, very glad to see the word “Moderator” with your name…finally.

I had been toying with the idea to suggest to you that you should write “Moderator” instead of “I am a communicator” , and before I could clothe my thought…

By the way, what took you so long?

Tom

8

Hi Phoo

You must not use to with had better. See below, please.

1- You had better leave this place as soon as possible.
2- She had better wait for the money.

Tom

9

Hi Tom,

Thanks for correcting my mistake.
I correct your mistake in return.
“suggest” is a transitive verb, therefore,
“suggest to you” should be written as “suggest you”.

Have a nice weekend!

Phoo

10

Hi,

Let me be the arbiter. I suggest that you do these exercises OR I suggest to you that you do these exercises

Both are acceptable.

Alan

11

Hi Alan,

Thank you for being the arbiter.

My dictonary and other dictionaries including “Longman”
say that “suggest” is a transitive verb.
I think that means the verb takes object without
prepositon, doesn’t it?

Phoo

12

Hi Phoo,

Yes, suggest is transitive in the sense that it is usually followed by a direct object but in these sentences:

it (suggest) is followed by another sentence -technically a noun clause (object). Take another verb recommend - you can recommend a grammar book (direct object) or you can say:

I recommend that you buy this book

or

I recommend to you that you buy this book

Hope that makes sense.

Alan

13

When a verb takes two objects such as:

“I give you a watch.” (Indirect Object=you, Direct Object=watch)
We also could say “I give a watch to you.”

Your explanation reminds me of this structure.

“I recommend to you that —.” (Indirect Object=you, Direct Object2=that—)

So can we also say:
“I recommend that — to you.” ??

Phoo