"Here toils, and Death, and Death's half-brother, Sleep,
Forms terrible to view their centry[79] keep."
(Dryden, Æneid, vi. 277.)
It is a contracted form of sanctuary. In the 17th century it is a pretty familiar word in this sense.[79] The earliest example I have come across is in Nashe—
"He hath no way now to slyppe out of my hands, but to take sentrie in the Hospital of Warwick."
(First Part of Pasquil's Apologie, 1590.)
Fr. guérite, a sentry box, can be traced back in the same way to Old Fr. garir (guérir), to save. Cotgrave explains it as "a place of refuge, and of safe retyrall," also "a sentrie, or little lodge for a sentinell, built on high." It is to this latter sense that we owe Eng. garret. In medieval French guérite means refuge, sanctuary—
"Ceste roche est Ihesucrist meismes qui est li refuges et la garite aus humbles."[80]
If French had not borrowed sentinelle from Italian, guérite would probably now mean "sentry"; cf. the history of vigie (p. [103]), or of vedette, a cavalry sentry, but originally "a prying or peeping hole" (Florio), from Ital. vedere, to see.
FOOTNOTES:
[63] Parchment (see p. [49]) was invented as a substitute when the supply of papyrus failed.