Watches

How to spell watches

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce watches

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does watches mean?

1. verbLooks at or observes something attentively, especially over a period of time.
2. nounMore than one small timepiece worn on the wrist or carried in a pocket.

Watches in a sentence

• verb

  She watches the evening news while she cooks dinner.

• noun

  The jeweller repairs antique watches in her back room.

• verb

  The supervisor watches the trainees closely during their first week.

• noun

  Both of his watches stopped working on the same morning.

Where does watches come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base word descends from the Old English wæcce, meaning a watching or a vigil, and from the related verb wæccan, 'to be awake' or 'to keep guard'. That same root gave us 'wake', and for centuries a 'watch' was literally a period of staying awake to stand guard, the sense still preserved in a ship's night watch. The timepiece meaning grew up much later, in the 1500s, when small portable clocks were carried to help people keep their nightly watches and rouse themselves; the device borrowed the name of the duty. The added '-es' is the ordinary English plural and third-person ending, attached because the stem already finishes in the hissing 'ch' sound, which is exactly why the spelling needs the extra 'e' before the 's'.

How the word is built

• watch (Old English wæcce: a watching, vigil)
• -es (plural noun / third-person singular verb suffix)