keep vigil

English

keep vigil (third-person singular simple present keeps vigil, present participle keeping vigil, simple past and past participle kept vigil)

To wait and watch, especially overnight.
- 2013, John E. Rawson, Blind Vigil, page 102:
  Sven, for the most part, stayed in the backdrop hovering nervously near the parlor window, where he now kept vigil for newly arriving guests .
- 2013, Joe Paprocki, D. Todd Williamson, Great is the Mystery, page 179:
  We started outside with the fire, then processed into the chapel of the retreat center where we kept vigil for the rest of the night by proclaiming the readings, chanting the psalms, and sitting in prolonged periods of reflective silence.
- 2015, Malcolm Lowry, Miguel Mota, Paul Tiessen, The 1940 Under the Volcano::
  a ruelle is a small lane , but in the bedrooms of the French monarchs of the Golden Age it denoted a narrow area beside the royal bed, where attendants kept vigil over their sleeping monarchs and into which the king's mistresses might.be introduced.
To observe the deceased overnight.
Synonym: have a wake

Rafael died this morning, and this afternoon we are going to keep vigil over him.

to observe the deceased overnight

“keep vigil”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.