warder

plural warders

1. A guard, especially in a prison.

   Nobody else spoke, but they noticed the long stripes on Okonkwo’s back where the warder’s whip had cut into his flesh.

   1958 June 17, Chinua Achebe, chapter 24, in Things Fall Apart, London: Heinemann, →OCLC

   3 more examples

   Kent. Mortimer, ’tis I. But hath thy portion wrought so happily? Younger Mortimer. It hath, my lord: the warders all asleep, I thank them, gave me leave to pass in peace.

   1594, Christopher Marlow[e], The Troublesome Raigne and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England: […], London: […] [Eliot’s Court Press] for Henry Bell, […], published 1622, →OCLC, [Act IV]

   Above the gloomy portal arch, / Timing his footsteps to a march, / The warder kept his guard, / Low humming, as he paced along, / Some ancient Border gathering song.

   1808 February 22, Walter Scott, “Canto First. The Castle.”, in Marmion; a Tale of Flodden Field, Edinburgh: […] J[ames] Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Company, […]; London: William Miller, and John Murray, →OCLC, stanza II, page 24

   So the guards carried him to the jail, thinking to lay him by the heels there for the night; but, when the warders saw his beauty and loveliness, they could not find it in their hearts to imprison him: they made him sit with them without the walls; and, when food came to them, he ate with them what sufficed him.

   1885, Richard Francis Burton, transl., The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5, 368th Night, p. 26

2. One who or that which wards or repels.

   The conspicuous position thus accorded to the cat as a warder-off of evil fortune seems oddly paralleled, though not imitated, by the place accorded to the same animal in popular European folklore.

   1876, The China Review, Or, Notes and Queries on the Far East, page 79

plural warders

1. archaicA truncheon or staff carried by a king or commander, used to signal commands.

   1595, Samuel Daniel, Civil Wars, in The Poetical Works of Mr. Samuel Daniel, Volume II, London: R. Gosling, 1718, Book I, stanza 62, p. 25, When, lo! the king chang’d suddenly his Mind, Casts down his Warder to arrest them there;

   2 more examples

   Stay, the king hath thrown his warder down.

   1595 December 9 (first known performance), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Richard the Second”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene 3]

   If thou doſt not inſtantly comply with theſe juſt demands, he defies thee to ſingle combat to the laſt extremity. And ſo ſaying, the Herald caſt down his warder.

   1764 December 24 (indicated as 1765), Onuphrio Muralto, translated by William Marshal [pseudonyms; Horace Walpole], chapter III, in The Castle of Otranto, […], London: […] Tho[mas] Lownds […], →OCLC, page 91

plural Warders

1. A surname from Old English.