different between vigil vs sentinel

English

Etymology

From Middle English vigile (“a devotional watching”), from Old French vigile, from Latin vigilia (“wakefulness, watch”), from vigil (“awake”), from Proto-Indo-European *we?- (“to be strong, lively, awake”). See also wake, from the same root.

Related to vigor, and more distantly compare vis and vital, from similar Proto-Indo-European roots and meanings (lively, power, life), via Latin. For use of “live, alive” in sense “watching”, compare qui vive.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?v?d??l/
• Rhymes: -?d??l

Noun

vigil (plural vigils)

1. An instance of keeping awake during normal sleeping hours, especially to keep watch or pray.
2. A period of observation or surveillance at any hour.

   His dog kept vigil outside the hospital for eight days while he was recovering from an accident.

3. The eve of a religious festival in which staying awake is part of the ritual devotions.
4. A quiet demonstration in support of a cause.

   The protesters kept vigil outside the conference centre in which the party congress was being held.

Synonyms

• (watch, especially at night): lookout, look-out, qui vive, watch

Related terms

• vigilance
• vigilant
• vigilation
• vigilous

Translations

Latin

Etymology

From Proto-Indo-European *we?- (“to be strong, lively, awake”), whence vige?.

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /?u?i.?il/, [?u??????]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /?vi.d??il/, [?vi?d??il]

Adjective

vigil (genitive vigilis); third-declension one-termination adjective

1. awake, watching, alert

Declension

Third-declension one-termination adjective.

Noun

vigil m (genitive vigilis); third declension

1. watchman, guard, sentinel; constable, fireman
2. (in the plural) the watch, police, constabulary

Declension

Third-declension noun.

Derived terms

• vigilia
• vigil?

Descendants

References

• vigil in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• vigil in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• vigil in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré Latin-Français, Hachette

English

Etymology

1570s, from Middle French sentinelle, from Old Italian sentinella (perhaps via a notion of "perceive, watch", compare Italian sentire (“to feel, hear, smell”)), from Latin senti? (“feel, perceive by the senses”). See sense.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?s?nt?n?l/

Noun

sentinel (plural sentinels)

1. A sentry, watch, or guard.
   • 1719- Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

     They promised faithfully to bear their confinement with patience, and were very thankful that they had such good usage as to have provisions and light left them; for Friday gave them candles (such as we made ourselves) for their comfort; and they did not know but that he stood sentinel over them at the entrance.

   • 1625, Francis Bacon, Of Empire

     that princes do keep due sentinel

2. (obsolete) A private soldier.
   • 1789, John Moore, Zeluco, Valancourt 2008, p. 33:

     “I will not permit the poorest centinel to be treated with injustice.”

3. (computer science) a unique string of characters recognised by a computer program for processing in a special way; a keyword.

4. A sentinel crab.
5. (attributive, medicine, epidemiology) A sign of a health risk (e.g. a disease, an adverse effect).

Translations

Verb

sentinel (third-person singular simple present sentinels, present participle (US) sentineling or (UK) sentinelling, simple past and past participle (US) sentineled or (UK) sentinelled)

1. (transitive) To watch over as a guard.

   He sentineled the north wall.

2. (transitive) To post as guard.

   He sentineled him on the north wall.

3. (transitive) To post a guard for.

   He sentineled the north wall with just one man.

   • 1873, Harper's New Monthly Magazine (volume 46, page 562)

     The old-fashioned stoop, with its suggestive benches on either side, lay solitary and silent in the moonlight; the garden path, weedily overgrown since father's death, and sentineled here and there with ragged hollyhock, lay quiet and dew-laden […]

Translations

Anagrams

• lenients