SENTINELLE

The great variety of the conjectures offered in explanationof this word shew how little satisfaction has been found in anyone of them. There is little or no analogy between the duties of a sentinel and those of the Lat. sentinator which is the favorite dérivation. The business of the sentinator was to empty the sentina, not to watch it, nor indeed is it possible to deduce such a form as sentinelle from sentinator. Scheler dérives the word from another sentina (for which he adduces no authority whatever), with the signification of a detachment or picket, either from the OHG. sentan, to send, or the Romance sentar, to place. Such vague suggestions of possibilités are of little worth. Itis obvious in the first place from the féminine gender of the word that it does not in the first instance signify the agent himself, but some impersonal thing connected with his duties. I suppose in my Dictionary that this fundamental signification was the beat or short path to which the sentinel was confined when on guard, from the 0. Fr. sente, a path, of which numerous diminutives are cited by Roquefort, sentie, sentine, sentelle, sentelet, senteret, etc. As nothing is more common than the doubling of a diminutive termination, there is nothing forced in the supposition of a form sentinelle to signify the very short path which constitutes the sentinel's beat. Indeed the word seems to have this fundamental signification in a passage cited by Littré. « Qui se fasche quand on l'appelle à la porte, à la sentinelle, à la tranchée, et au rempart, il n'est point de la bonne part ». — Sot. Min. Here sentinelle is mentioned among several other localities of the fortress or camp

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to which a soldier may be called by his duty. The meaning also remains in the expression lever, or relever de sentinelle, to relieve a sentinel, to take him firom his beat. It is a strong confirmation of this etymology that in English we have the synonymous forms sentinel and sentry, neither of which can possibly be derived firom the other, while the descent of each firom the OFr. sente is equally transparent, the latter of the two, sentry, being a mere adaptation of the Fr. sentent, one of the diminutives cited by Roquefort. To keep sentry then, as Fr. demeurer en sentinelle, is for a soldier to keep the limited path appointed for his guard ».