How to Use watchman in a Sentence

watchman

noun
  • A watchman stopped them at the gate.
  • The old man of the night, the watchman not yet in bed.
    — Literary Hub, 19 Sep. 2025
  • Well, there might be an opening as a night watchman on the docks.
    — Whitney Tower, Town & Country, 5 Feb. 2014
  • Arnold said his client didn’t know why there wasn’t a watchman or what the cause of the fire might be.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 19 Sep. 2019
  • One of the six crew members was supposed to have served as a night watchman.
    — Kris Van Cleave, CBS News, 5 Sep. 2019
  • There are night watchmen trudging through the snow and a lamplighter with his ladder and lantern.
    — Roberta Smith, New York Times, 1 June 2017
  • The police briefly detained a night watchman, but then released him.
    — Aurelien Breeden, New York Times, 23 Feb. 2018
  • The name jack-o’-lantern can also be derived from the night watchman who would light the street lanterns every evening.
    — CNN, 13 Oct. 2021
  • This one looks like the night watchman at an animal processing plant.
    — Alex Beggs, Bon Appétit, 2 Nov. 2019
  • Greco was standing in as night watchman the evening of his death, charging documents said.
    — Jeff Parrott, Anchorage Daily News, 30 Oct. 2019
  • Although no watchman patrols this maze of valuable knowledge, the patron does not feel safe.
    — Seija Rankin, EW.com, 26 May 2020
  • The great difference is that the watchman is now a willing accomplice.
    — Fintan O’Toole, The New York Review of Books, 12 June 2020
  • The night watchman at a restaurant across the street runs a hose every other day to their house to fill up buckets of water.
    — Washington Post, 20 Nov. 2019
  • His grandfather was the city’s first night watchman, and his father served on the school board, city council, and as mayor.
    — Rick Mauch, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 9 Feb. 2024
  • After all, when the watchmen have lost moral authority to watch, who can be believed or trusted?
    — Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 5 Dec. 2019
  • He is accused of failing to train his crew, conduct fire drills and post a roving night watchman on the boat when the fire ignited.
    — CBS News, 18 Oct. 2022
  • Trayvon Martin was walking home the night he was killed by an overzealous neighborhood watchman.
    — Jeneé Osterheldt, kansascity, 16 May 2018
  • Moore’s opus was about the extent to which people place their trust in costumed avengers and asked the age-old question of who watches the watchmen.
    — David Sims, The Atlantic, 22 Oct. 2019
  • Something for New Yorkers to keep in mind while watching their watchmen ahead of next year’s city elections.
    — Harry Siegel, New York Daily News, 27 July 2024
  • His father, James, was a night watchman and laborer who died when Franklin was 11.
    — New York Times, 23 Dec. 2021
  • And what if one of these police officers, these watchmen and watchwomen, looks out and sees nothing but the darkness?
    — Chris Jones, chicagotribune.com, 21 Feb. 2018
  • One version occurs at the old rifle range, where the watchman — also armed with a rifle — wakes from the assault to find his weapon bent in half.
    — Aaron Gilbreath, Longreads, 25 Apr. 2018
  • The men then put the water canisters into the boot of the car, the NEI watchman said.
    — Anna Coren, CNN, 14 Sep. 2021
  • Moreover, the department depended on a system of watchmen perched in high places to spot the first glints of an inferno.
    — Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, 2 Oct. 2023
  • One, in New York City, missed the judge who was apparently its object but killed a night watchman.
    — Adam Hochschild, Washington Post, 28 Sep. 2022
  • Manhattan’s main fire alarm was a bell in the City Hall copula tolled by a watchman who scanned the low skyline for licks of flame.
    — Edward Kosner, WSJ, 25 Jan. 2022
  • Church watchman Maru Gebremariam said the dead have been buried in mass graves and have not been given a proper burial.
    — Sohel Uddin, ABC News, 23 June 2021
  • The term Jack-o'-lantern comes from the idea of a night watchman, who would light the street lanterns every evening, CNN noted.
    — Elizabeth Berry, Woman's Day, 8 July 2022
  • In the city of Lausanne, near the French border, a watchman climbs to the top of a cathedral’s bell tower to call out the time every hour.
    — Jen Kirby, Vox, 14 June 2019
  • On the two occasions when a security officer stopped by to check on the hangars, the watchman used a walkie-talkie to warn the others to stay quiet.
    — Wired, 17 Oct. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'watchman.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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