vigil

From Middle English vigile (“a devotional watching”), from Old French vigile, from Latin vigilia (“wakefulness, watch”), from vigil (“awake”), from Proto-Indo-European *weǵ- (“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.

• IPA^(key): /ˈvɪd͡ʒəl/

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• Rhymes: -ɪd͡ʒəl

vigil (plural vigils)

1. An instance of keeping awake during normal sleeping hours, especially to keep watch or pray.
   • 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], Francesca Carrara. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 149:

     I saw her head drooped upon her hand; her whole attitude expressing that profound depression, whose lonely vigil wastes the midnight in a gloomy watch, which yet hopes for nothing at its close.

   • 2016, Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad, Fleet (2017), page 165:

     Eventually the body trade grew so reckless that relatives took to holding graveside vigils, lest their loved ones disappear in the night.

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.

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

• vigilance
• vigilant
• vigilation
• vigilous

From Proto-Indo-European *weǵ- (“to be strong, lively, awake”), whence vigeō.

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈu̯i.ɡil/, [ˈu̯ɪɡɪɫ̪]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈvi.d͡ʒil/, [ˈviːd͡ʒil]

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

1. awake, watching, alert

Third-declension one-termination adjective.

vigil m (genitive vigilis); third declension

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

Third-declension noun.

• vigilia
• vigilō

• “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