Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Tidy; trim: a nicely kempt beard.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A past participle of kemb.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
WordNet 3.0
- adj. (of hair) neat and tidy
Etymologies
- Originally a past participle of Old English cemban ("to comb"). Modern uses are back-formations from the negative unkempt. (Wiktionary)
- Back-formation from unkempt. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“With his thick gray hair, salt-and-pepper beard, and aviator glasses, he looked like a well-kempt Jerry Garcia.”
“Chestnut tresses, once close-cut and well-kempt, fall almost to his shoulders which slump in ressentiment: * to every hair however stray, those shoulders seem to say, Halt!”
“On the whole, she was not much cleaner or any better kempt than the ragamuffin boy.”
“Half-wit neighborhood darling parks a new Denali in the driveway and his family twiglegs around it in hostile kempt gladhands.”
“Further proof of this trend resides not merely in recent childhood obesity and Type-II diabetes data, but also through observing the well-kempt suburban neighborhoods throughout L.A. seemingly designed for the sole purpose of outdoor activity - for impromptu outbreaks of tag, red rover, and pickle - that are now eerily bereft of the sights and sounds of children at play.”
The Huffington Post: Brock Cohen: Welcome to Bubble Boy Nation
“ She pictures him sitting atop some weatherbeaten couch in a small apartment somewhere, his hair longer and less kempt, opening it with anticipation -”
“On the far side of the table are a number of well-kempt academic types.”
hughstimson.org » Blog Archive » Liveblogging the GEO Contract Negotiations
“April 9, 2010 at 5:17 pm matt kempt looks like a thug 2 me”
“Chestnut tresses, once close-cut and well-kempt, fall almost to his shoulders which slump in ressentiment:* to every hair however stray, those shoulders seem to say, Halt!”
“I have only ever seen you kempt and all I can think of right now is the photo of you in your party dress which makes your assertation of scruff laughable ..”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘kempt’.
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Deprefixed words
A list of words you more frequently hear used with prefixes than without.
clement, witting, ravel, whelm, fettered, licit, couth, bridled, wieldy, kempt, ingenuous, iterate and 116 more...
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WF - list of EN back-formations
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_back-formations
aborigine, accrete, acculturate, admix, admixture, adolesce, adsorb, adulate, advect, aesthete, air-condition, anticline and 212 more...
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Archaic, obsolete words
liche, outen, sepulcher, tull, alfet, kempt, overmuckle, strude, middenstead, inquere, electrion, betide and 12 more...
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Neato Keen Words
My list of neato keen words.
fab, neato, keen, fantabulous, awesome, marvellous, hubba, yurt, kempt, effete, jumbo, italic and 2 more...
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Favorite Words of AWP13
We asked attendees who visited the Wordnik booth what their favorite words were, and these are what they told us. (AWP is an annual conference for writers and those in the writing world.)
cling, declivity, susurrus, caramel, cataract, please, fester, reverie, kerplunk!, defenestration, colonel, ocean and 174 more...
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What Do You Mean #
get these dude
Irresolute, Founder, Barricade, Embellish, Avid, Raucous, Futile, punctilious, stark, trammel, interdict, solitious and 97 more...
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rememberers
prolix, ageusia, animadversion, anodyne, antic, arabesque, beadle, brachymetropia, colophon, desquamation, diaphoresis, diegesis and 3251 more...
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Vocab
All the words I've come across whose definitions I did not know then.
aberration, abrogate, abscond, abstruse, acolyte, actuate, adulation, advert, aggrandize, aggro, ague, alimony and 273 more...
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unpack your adjectives
and adverbs
walrusine, slipshod, bemused, inscrutable, bombastic, cattywampus, copacetic, famished, crackpot, flailsome, lugubrious, scalesome and 102 more...
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Prosie: How I Met My Wife
by Jack Winter
Published 25 July 1994, The New Yorker
It had been a rough day, so when I walked into the party I was very chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled and conso...requited, committal, at a godly hour, defatigable, to much avail, choate, advertently, nomer, up to some good, savory character, mayed, bunk a few myths and 52 more...
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sans prefix
cumber, fatigable, wieldy, ruly, prandial, humously, combobulate, couth, crepit, dain, prave, ert and 25 more...
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Short ’n’ sweet
Words of 5 letters or less (thus pithy) that are pretty cool anyway.
pithy, cavil, hilt, trope, elegy, gett, kyrie, sorry, gild, glebe, buxom, iowa and 42 more...
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positives
words usually in a negative form
chalant, gruntled, kempt, shevelled, maculate, ept, plussed, corrigible, petuous, beknownst, requited, sipid
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list 1
Tweets
Looking for tweets for kempt.

bilby "I dreamt that my hair was kempt. Then I dreamt that my true love unkempt it."
- Ogden Nash Jun 28, 2012
yarb I should add that all seemed to take a pride in their personal appearance, and that even the poorest (and none seemed rich) were well kempt and tidy.
- Samuel Butler, Erewhon Jul 18, 2008