Sentinel
name, noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A sentry, watch, or guard.
"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."
- 2 a person employed to keep watch for some anticipated event wordnet
- 3 A private soldier. obsolete
"“I will not permit the poorest centinel to be treated with injustice.”"
- 4 A unique value recognised by a computer program for processing in a special way, or marking the end of a set of data.
"The <xmp> tag is a sentinel that suspends web-page processing and displays the subsequent text literally"
- 5 A sentinel crab.
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- 6 A sign of a health risk (e.g. a disease, an adverse effect). attributive
"sentinel animals can be used to explore endemic diseases."
- 1 To watch over as a guard. transitive
"He sentineled the north wall."
- 2 To post a guard for. transitive
"He sentineled the north wall with just one man."
- 1 A place in the United States:; An unincorporated community in Maricopa County, Arizona.
- 2 A place in the United States:; A ghost town in Fresno County, California.
- 3 A place in the United States:; An unincorporated community in Polk County, Missouri.
- 4 A place in the United States:; A town in Washita County, Oklahoma.
Example
More examples"On a rock which overlooked the track, showing out dark and plain against the sky, there stood a solitary sentinel."
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 sentiō (“feel, perceive by the senses”). See sense, sentient.