excubation
excubation noun: a keeping watch; a vigil.
Noun
excubation (uncountable)
- A keeping watch; a vigil.
- Yseult, who was not in the secret, demanded the reason of this perpetual excubation, and was, for the first time, informed that Tristan had sent for the queen of Cornwall.1814, John Colin Dunlop, The History of Fiction
- Infinitely more so than the lucubrations
Is the necessity there is for excubations.
Hard's the duty in three watches—worse watch and watch—
Expos'd to the elements without a thatch […]1840, Philonauta, Naval Progression, or the Midshipman of the Old School
Origin of excubation
From Latin excubatio, from excubare (“to lie out on guard”), from ex (“out”) + cubare (“to lie down”).
Questions about excubation
- What does excubation mean?
- Excubation means a keeping watch; a vigil.
- What part of speech is excubation?
- Excubation is a noun.
Words near excubation in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: excubation (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “excubation.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/excubation. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.