VIGILANCE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does vigilance mean? 

• VIGILANCE (noun)
  The noun VIGILANCE has 2 senses:

1. the process of paying close and continuous attention

2. vigilant attentiveness

  Familiarity information: VIGILANCE used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• VIGILANCE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The process of paying close and continuous attention

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Synonyms:

alertness; vigilance; wakefulness; watchfulness

Context example:

vigilance is especially susceptible to fatigue

Hypernyms ("vigilance" is a kind of...):

attention (the faculty or power of mental concentration)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "vigilance"):

jealousy (zealous vigilance)

Derivation:

vigilant (carefully observant or attentive; on the lookout for possible danger)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Vigilant attentiveness

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

vigilance; watchfulness; weather eye

Context example:

he keeps a weather eye open for trouble

Hypernyms ("vigilance" is a kind of...):

attentiveness (the trait of being observant and paying attention)

Derivation:

vigilant (carefully observant or attentive; on the lookout for possible danger)

 Context examples 

As to Miss Murdstone, for I had alluded to her in the letter, I respect that lady's vigilance, and feel obliged to her; but she has strict charge to avoid the subject.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

At these moments I often endeavoured to put an end to the existence I loathed, and it required unceasing attendance and vigilance to restrain me from committing some dreadful act of violence.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

He studied it with unceasing vigilance.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

I crossed the yard, wherein the constellations looked down upon me, I could have thought, with wonder, the first creature of that sort that their unsleeping vigilance had yet disclosed to them; I stole through the corridors, a stranger in my own house; and coming to my room, I saw for the first time the appearance of Edward Hyde.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Grace has, on the whole, proved a good keeper; though, owing partly to a fault of her own, of which it appears nothing can cure her, and which is incident to her harassing profession, her vigilance has been more than once lulled and baffled.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man’s goods from thieves, but honesty has no defence against superior cunning; and, since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying and selling, and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted and connived at, or has no law to punish it, the honest dealer is always undone, and the knave gets the advantage.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)