Vigilantes

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Persons acting independently to uphold laws and exert justice outside formal systems
2. Groups of individuals who assume responsibility for law enforcement, often in the absence of official power
3. People who take it upon themselves to enforce rules or punish wrongdoing without legal sanction

Etymology: Before it described people who take the law into their own hands, "vigilante" was an ordinary Spanish adjective meaning watchful or alert. It descends from Latin "vigilans," the present participle of "vigilare," "to keep watch," and shares its root with "vigil" and "vigilance." The sense that matters here came from the American frontier, where groups of citizens formed "committees of vigilance" to punish crime when local courts seemed weak or corrupt. The name claimed a kind of legitimacy: these men saw themselves as guarding the community when its official guardians had failed. Over time, the term shifted from describing the committees to naming the individuals who acted on their own.

Synonyms: watchmen, guardians, enforcers