phrase someone who does not work but is instead given money and a place to live by the person she or he is having a sexual relationship with: （被包养的）姘妇/面首 If he'd married her, he would have become a kept man. She had no desire to be a kept woman in a loveless marriage. She was living as the kept woman of a rich painter. The novel was about a kept woman who left her lover and made a life for herself in the countryside. See also