sentinel

plural sentinels · alternative obsolete centinel

1. A sentry, watch, or guard.

   that princes do keep due sentinel

   1625, Francis [Bacon], “Of Empire”, in The Essayes […], 3rd edition, London: […] Iohn Haviland for Hanna Barret, →OCLC

   2 more examples

   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 the entrance.

   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 ramparts

   1849–1861, 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 Longmans, →OCLC

2. obsoleteA private soldier.

   “I will not permit the poorest centinel to be treated with injustice.”

   1789, John Moore, Zeluco, Valancourt, published 2008, page 33

3. computerA 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

   1 more example

   […] a sentinel value that indicates a missing entry.

   2016, Jake VanderPlas, Python Data Science Handbook, page 120

4. A sentinel crab.
5. attributiveepidemiologyA sign of a health risk (e.g. a disease, an adverse effect).

   Sentinel animals can be used to explore endemic diseases.

present singular third person sentinels · US participle present sentineling · UK participle present sentinelling · US participle past sentineled · US past sentineled · UK participle past sentinelled · UK past sentinelled · alternative obsolete centinel

1. transitiveTo watch over as a guard.

   He sentineled the north wall.

2. transitiveTo post a guard for.

   He sentineled the north wall with just one man.

   1 more example

   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

1. A place in the United States:
   1. An unincorporated community in Maricopa County, Arizona.
   2. A ghost town in Fresno County, California.
   3. An unincorporated community in Polk County, Missouri.
   4. A town in Washita County, Oklahoma.