warder

Etymology

Habitational surname, from the village of Wardour, Wiltshire, named with Old English weard (“guard”) + ōra (“bank, slope”).

name

  1. A surname from Old English.

noun

  1. A guard, especially in a prison.“Kent. Mortimer, ’tis I. But hath thy portion wrought so happily? Younger Mortimer. It hath, my lord: the warders all asleep, I thank them, gave me leave to pass in peace.”
  2. One who or that which wards or repels.“The conspicuous position thus accorded to the cat as a warder-off of evil fortune seems oddly paralleled, though not imitated, by the place accorded to the same animal in popular European folklore.”
  3. A truncheon or staff carried by a king or commander, used to signal commands.“1595, Samuel Daniel, Civil Wars, in The Poetical Works of Mr. Samuel Daniel, Volume II, London: R. Gosling, 1718, Book I, stanza 62, p. 25, When, lo! the king chang’d suddenly his Mind, Casts down his Warder to arrest them there;”