Meaning

noun a small portable timepiece

noun a period of time (4 or 2 hours) during which some of a ship's crew are on duty

noun a purposeful surveillance to guard or observe

originFrom Middle English wacchen, from Old English wæċċan, from Proto-West Germanic *wakkjan, from Proto-Germanic *wakjaną. Cognate with Dutch wekken, German wecken, Danish vække, Norwegian Bokmål vekke, Norwegian Nynorsk vekkja, Swedish väcka, Faroese and Icelandic vekja.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0