‘Vigilant’

in case Covid-19 crept up on them from behind. We are now told we means awake, and to stay awake. So originally religious, but then potentially secular too. One who is ‘vigilant’ is both awake and concentrating, and so we have been given a more arduous duty than simply staying ‘alert’. , the words being originally the same. As a Missouri newspaper of 1821 declared: ‘We hate what are called vigilant men; they are a set of suspicious, mean-spirited mortals, that dislike fun.’