the.com/ward
a circle drawn to keep the dark on the wrong side of the line
means a person, place, or thing under someone's protection or guardianship — or, as a verb, the act of guarding against or keeping something off.
from From Old English 'weard,' meaning a guard, keeper, or watchman, rooted in a Proto-Germanic word for watching and protecting. It's a close cousin of 'guard' — the two are the same idea wearing different clothes, 'guard' having come the long way round through Old French. The same root spreads into 'warden,' 'wardrobe' (a place that guards your clothes), and the watchful '-ward' that tells you which way to look.
- hospital wing
- groups of patients sorted like a deck of fragile cards
- old root
- shares ancestry with guard and warden, all watchers
- city ward
- a chunk of town carved up for voting
- magic sense
- a barrier spell hexing intruders in countless fantasy worlds
- the verb
- to ward off is to elbow away danger
bellevue psychiatric ward — the famous locked psychiatric ward at bellevue hospital in manhattan, where countless famous figures have been committed