vigilante
noun
definition: one who seeks to avenge a crime or injury or to punish a suspected criminal without legal authority or due process.
example: Many fear that the neighborhood watch group might include a few vigilantes who will take justice into their own hands.
example: As the Cold War was replaced by America’s ongoing wars on crime and drugs, Hollywood embraced the armed vigilante as a heroic icon. (Patrick McCormick, “How the West Wasn’t,” US Catholic, March 2011)
Word History
Vigilante is an American-English word borrowed from Spanish in the nineteenth century. The Spanish word means, literally, “watch man,” and was used in American English to mean “member of a vigilance committee.” According to Wikipedia, a vigilance committee was
a group formed of private citizens to administer law and order where they considered governmental structures to be inadequate. The term is commonly associated with the frontier areas of the American West in the mid-19th century, where groups attacked cattle rustlers and gangs, and people at gold mining claims. As non-state organizations no functioning checks existed to protect against excessive force or safeguard due process from the committees. In the years prior to the Civil War, some committees worked to free slaves and transport them to freedom. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigilance_committee. Accessed 3/2/2020.)
Vigilante has the same Latin origins as vigilant (keenly alert; watchful, especially for danger) and vigil (a watch or period of surveillance, especially one that lasts all night.). The Latin adjective vigil means “wakeful, watchful, alert,” and is related to the Latin verb vigere, meaning “to be lively,” from which we get vigor, invigorate, and vigorous.
