Nightwatchman

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person employed to keep watch over a location at night
2. An individual who ensures security and monitors a site during the hours of darkness
3. Someone hired to monitor and protect a property throughout the nighttime hours

Etymology: A nightwatchman is, at heart, a plain compound: the night, and the watchman who keeps guard over it. The older "watchman" was a man paid to stay awake and patrol a town or property after dark, calling out the hours and raising the alarm against fire or thieves. Adding "night" simply specified the shift, so the word names a job defined by its hours as much as by its duty. The compound's real interest lies in how little it has needed to change. Its two parts have kept their everyday senses for centuries, so a reader meeting it for the first time can work out its meaning without help, which is part of why it reads as transparent rather than technical. The word belongs to the same family of compounds that name a worker by the time of their duty, such as "night nurse" or "night porter," where the time phrase does the specifying work.

Synonyms: guard, sentinel, watchman, patroller, protector