watches

1. 1
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of watch.

   He watches every match from the same seat behind the goal.

   The nurse watches the monitor for any change in the patient's heart rate.

   Note

   The -es ending appears because watch ends in -ch, and the result shares its spelling with the plural noun: she watches, three watches. The verb works with or without an object (she watches and waits; she watches the door). In its vigil meaning it needs no object at all: she watches by the sickbed through the night.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of watch.

   The jeweler repaired three vintage watches in a single afternoon.

   Sailors stood their watches in four-hour shifts through the night.

   Note

   A plural that counts very different things: timepieces on a jeweler's bench, spells of guard duty, or whole bodies of guards. Because a single watch can already be a group of people, watches in that meaning usually means several crews or shifts, not several guards. For duty periods the natural verbs are stand and keep, as when sailors stand their watches.

3. 3
   nounarchaic

   A yellow-flowered pitcher plant, Sarracenia flava, of the southeastern United States, named because the openings of its leaves resemble a clock face.

   Like a pitcher whose smooth inner walls let prey slide in but never climb back out.

   Along the wet pine savanna, tall watches rose in golden patches above the grass.

   The old collector pressed several watches between sheets of blotting paper for his herbarium.

   Note

   An old common name built on a likeness: someone looking at the leaves of Sarracenia flava saw a clock face, and the plant took the timepiece's name. Because the name is archaic, it now turns up mainly in older writing, where it is easily misread as the plural of watch. In current prose, the safe choice is the species name Sarracenia flava, with the old name added only for color.

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