earn your keep

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

to justify one's place in a household, organisation, or situation by contributing sufficient work, value, or usefulness to offset the cost of one's maintenance and support; the phrase derives from the agricultural tradition in which farm labourers and apprentices received board and lodging in exchange for their work, with their keep meaning the cost of feeding, housing, and clothing them; it implies a transactional relationship in which continued presence is contingent on continued contribution, and it is used both literally of people who must demonstrate their practical worth and metaphorically of tools, policies, or expenditures that must demonstrate commensurate value