In Casablanca, Mr and Mrs Leuchtag resolve to speak English to each other in preparation for emigration to America. Mr Leuchtag asks: ‘Liebchen — sweetness heart, what watch?’ Mrs Leuchtag: ‘Ten watch.’ Mr Leuchtag: ‘Such much?’ The head waiter, Carl (played by S.Z. Sakall) comments: ‘Hmm. You will get along beautiful in America.’
A development in the use of watch, as a verb, has emerged recently. ‘Harry Kane was forced to watch on as Spurs scraped through,’ reported the Sun, and the Guardian wrote of Amish women playing volleyball ‘as their husbands watch on and cheer’. To me, it should either be look on or simply watch.
I can’t find that the OED has caught up with watch on, although it does in passing record the verb in a quotation from 2007 intended to illustrate the meaning of Jack Russell: ‘His Jack Russell and border terrier, Pig and Otis, watch on lazily.’
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