sentinel
/ˈsɛn.tɪ.nəl/
sentinel noun: a sentry, watch, or guard.
Noun
sentinel (plural sentinels)
- 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...1719 May 6 (Gregorian calendar), [Daniel Defoe], The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, […], London: […] W[illiam] Taylor […], →OCLC
- the sentinels who paced the ramparts1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter XII, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and...
- A private soldier.
- “I will not permit the poorest centinel to be treated with injustice.”1789, John Moore, Zeluco, Valancourt, published 2008, page 33
- 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
- […] a sentinel value that indicates a missing entry.2016, Jake VanderPlas, Python Data Science Handbook, page 120
- A sentinel crab.
- A sign of a health risk (e.g. a disease, an adverse effect).
- sentinel animals can be used to explore endemic diseases.
Verb
sentinel (third-person singular simple present sentinels, present participle (US) sentineling or (UK) sentinelling, simple past and past participle (US) sentineled or (UK) sentinelled)
- To watch over as a guard.
- He sentineled the north wall.
- To post a guard for.
- He sentineled the north wall with just one man.
- The old-fashioned stoop, with its suggestive benches on either side, lay solitary and silent in the moonlight; the garden path, weedily overgrown since father's death, and sentineled here and there with ragged hollyhock, lay quiet and dew-laden […]1873, Harper's New Monthly Magazine, volume 46, page 562
Proper noun capitalized: Sentinel
Sentinel
- An unincorporated community in Maricopa County, Arizona.
- A ghost town in Fresno County, California.
- An unincorporated community in Polk County, Missouri.
- A town in Washita County, Oklahoma.
sentinel meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali
sentinel in Hindi
- a sentry or guard
- प्रहरी prahrī
sentinel in Tamil
- இடங்காட்டுங் குறி, குறிகாட்டி
sentinel in Urdu
- چوکیدار, پاسبان
sentinel in Bengali
- প্রহরী, পাহারাদার
More languagesFewer languages
- sentinel in Telugu
- అంగజాల aṅgajāla, కావలివాడు kāvalivāḍu
- sentinel in Malayalam
- കാവൽക്കാരൻ
- sentinel in Kannada
- ಕಾವಲು ಸಿಪಾಯಿ, ಕಾವಲುಗಾರ, ಪಡೆಯ ಕಾವಲು
- sentinel in Odia
- ସେଣ୍ଟିନେଲ୍, ସେଣ୍ଟିନେଲ
- sentinel in Nepali
- सेनटेनल, सेन्टिनेल
- sentinel in Arabic
- حَارِس ḥāris, خَفِير ḵafīr, غَفِير ḡafīr
Examples of sentinel in a sentence
- The sentinel challenged us with "Who goes there?"
- Post a sentinel in front of the door.
- The class of minimal clauses is outerly sentineled by the negative example.
Forms of sentinel
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | sentinels |
| alternative form (obsolete) | centinel |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | sentinels |
| present participle US | sentineling |
| present participle UK | sentinelling |
| past participle US | sentineled |
| past US | sentineled |
| past participle UK | sentinelled |
| past UK | sentinelled |
Origin of sentinel
First attested in the 1570s from Middle French sentinelle (“watch or guard kept by a soldier”), from Old Italian sentinella, probably from sentina + -ella, from sentire (“perceive, watch, hear”), from sentiō (“feel, perceive by the senses”). See also sense, sentient.
Words formed from sentinel
Phrases with sentinel
Questions about sentinel
- What does sentinel mean?
- Sentinel means a sentry, watch, or guard.
- What is sentinel in Hindi?
- Sentinel in Hindi is प्रहरी (prahrī). See Sentinel meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is sentinel?
- Sentinel can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce sentinel?
- Sentinel is pronounced /ˈsɛn.tɪ.nəl/.
- What is the plural of sentinel?
- The plural of sentinel is sentinels.
Words near sentinel in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: sentinel (page history and authors); Sentinel (page history and authors); sentinel (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); sentinel (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); sentinel (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); అంగజాల (Telugu) (page history and authors); sentinel (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); sentinel (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); sentinel (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); sentinel (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-sentinel.ogg.
Cite this entry: “sentinel.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentinel. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.