Other forms: vigils
A vigil is staying awake through the night to watch or pray. Keep vigil, a candlelit vigil, hold a vigil.
The public kind — standing outside with candles after a death — is a modern form of a very old religious practice, and it works because presence says what speeches cannot. In hospital, keeping vigil means sitting with somebody who is dying. The Latin means awake.
1nounvigilStaying awake through the night to watch or pray.
“She kept a vigil by her sick father's bed all night.”
vigil is a watch.
Latin vigilia means wakefulness, from vigil, awake. Vigilant and reveille are relatives.
Proto-Indo-European
*weǵ- — to be strong, lively, awake
Latin
vigilia — wakefulness, watch
Old French
vigile
Middle English
vigile — a devotional watching
English, today
vigil
Built from
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”). a doublet of Wigilia. See also wake and vigor, from the same root.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA