watch and ward

watch and ward (uncountable)

1. (law, historical) The charge or care of certain officers to keep a watch by night and a guard by day in towns, cities, and other districts, for the preservation of the public peace.
2. (by extension) Uninterrupted vigilance.
   • 1904–1906, Joseph Conrad, chapter XXV, in The Mirror of the Sea, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.; London: Harper & Brothers, published October 1906, →OCLC:

     The narrow seas around these isles, where British admirals keep watch and ward upon the marches of the Atlantic Ocean, are subject to the turbulent sway of the West Wind.

   • 1917, Lee Wilson Dodd, "To America" (poem), in Fifes and Drums

     You need
     A starker breed
     To cherish you and guard,
     Keep watch and ward,
     Or strike if strike they must!

Most commonly in the phrase keep watch and ward

• “watch”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

watch and ward (third-person singular simple present watches and wards, present participle watching and warding, simple past and past participle watched and warded)

1. To keep constant watch over
   • 1894, John Ruskin, Munera Pulveris:

     we might have been carried in swift safety, and watched and warded by well-paid pointsmen, for half the present fares