nightwatcher

plural nightwatchers · alternative night watcher · alternative night-watcher

1. dateduncommonA person who watches or guards something at night; a nightwatchman.

   'So, the nightwatcher comes home at last!' he said. I threw off my shirt.

   1984, Geoffrey C. T. Ndhlala, The Southern Circle, page 115

   5 more examples

   In the silence of the night melodious sounds fall upon the ear from the mysterious stillness of the monasteries, or the voices of the nightwatchers are heard in improvised songs to the perfections of the lady of their affections after the manner of their forefathers in bygone ages.

   1898, Vicente Bonnet Torres, Album and Guide to Teneriffe, page 137

   therefore, who diverges from the nightwatcher state must also deny the "private character" of religion.

   1930, Edgar Julius Jung, Rule of the Inferiour, page 104

   We are not prepared to say that merely because the nightwatcher has not been examined, the rest of the confession and the positive evidence of P.Ws. 1 and 2 are untrue and that the appellant was back at the Post Office at an earlier hour than the time of the murder.

   1959, D.V. Chitaley (publisher), All India Reporter, volume 1, page 423

   The most noticeable change in the educational level of the nightwatchers occurs in the reversal of the percentage of preprofessionals in 1963 and the professionals in 1969.

   1967, John H. Randell, M.S.W., “A Nightwatch Program in A Suicide Prevention Center”, in Bulletin of Suicidology, page 54

   It was doubtless caused by one of those meteors which the nightwatcher may so often observe burning out to waste in the vacant regions of the atmosphere.

   1988, David B. Kesterson (editor), Critical Essays on Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, page 52

2. dateduncommonSomeone who keeps watch in the night with questionable or harmful intentions.