Other forms: sentries
A sentry is a soldier posted to stand and watch — at a gate, a bridge, the door of a palace. One either side of the entrance, rifle held upright, eyes forward, not moving for an hour at a time.
The job is standing sentry, the shift is sentry duty, and the little wooden hut that keeps the rain off is a sentry box. Sentries are posted, relieved and changed. The word belongs to armies and to older stories, so it sounds odd about ordinary life: a museum has a security guard, not a sentry. It does stretch to animals — one meerkat stands sentry on a mound while the rest of the group digs.
1nounsentryA soldier posted to keep watch and control who passes.
“A sentry stopped the car at the gate.”
2nounanimalAn animal in a group that keeps watch for danger while the others feed.
“One bird acts as a sentry while the flock feeds.”
sentry is a guard.
Nobody has pinned sentry down. It appears in earlier English as sentrie and sentery, and the guesses run two ways: a worn-down form of sentinel or of sanctuary, or the Old French senteret, 'a path', a small relative of sentier, from a Medieval Latin word that also meant a path. A watchman walking his beat would suit either story, which is part of why the question is still open.
Old French
senteret — a path
English, today
sentry
Built from
From earlier sentrie, sentery, of uncertain origin. Perhaps an alteration of a doublet of sentinel or sanctuary; or perhaps from Old French senteret (“a path”), diminutive of sentier, from Medieval Latin - semitarius (“a path”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove, Military & Defence
First appears in chapter 37 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word