keep a lid on
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
to control or restrain something
Literally: to put a lid on a container
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
At the moment all we're doing is keeping the lid on a still a pretty serious problem.
A leading industry figure said: ‘ We could have real problems keeping a lid on this situation.’
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “keep a lid on” mean?
to control or restrain something Literally: to put a lid on a container
Is “keep a lid on” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.