watch [OE] In Old English watch meant ‘to be or remain awake’, and it is from the same root as wake [OE] and awake [OE]. The connection with timepieces arose because in the 15th century the first watches were alarm clocks of some kind, whose function was to wake you up. The watches of the night are the hours of night, especially as a time when you cannot sleep. This watch was one of the periods into which the night was divided for the purposes of guard duty. The link with insomnia first appears in the writings of Sir Walter Scott, who wrote in his journal for January 1826: ‘The watches of the night pass wearily when disturbed by fruitless regrets.’ Woke, as an adjective, has been a US regional, mainly African-American, usage, simply meaning ‘awake’ since the late 19th century. From the 1960s it has meant ‘well-informed’ but has recently become very prominent in the sense ‘alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice’.