Meaning

noun a person who is under the protection or in the custody of another

noun a district into which a city or town is divided for the purpose of administration and elections

noun block forming a division of a hospital (or a suite of rooms) shared by patients who need a similar kind of care

originFrom Middle English ward, warde, from Old English weard (“watching, ward, protection, guardianship; advance post; waiting for, lurking, ambuscade”), from Proto-West Germanic *wardu, from Proto-Germanic *wardō (“protection, attention, keeping”), an extension of the stem *wara- (“attentive”) (English wary, beware), from Proto-Indo-European *wer- (“to cover”). Cognate with German Warte…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0