Definition of "qui vive" [qui• vive]

• A sentinel's challenge. (noun)
• On the qui vive On the alert; vigilant: "a loathsome Dublin politico who is on the qui vive for . . . terrorists” ( Julian Moynahan). (idiom)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Those on the qui vive who need to flaunt their with-it-ness in the face of the stodgily au courant have turned to hot, with the extreme of “forwardly fashionable, at the center of attention” expressed as way hot or hot-hot."
• "On the day fixed for the entrance of the squire and his family, the inhabitants of Sutton were on the qui vive from early in the morning - but nothing came to pass; the most strenuous watchers had retired in despair to the tap-room, where Peter Brocclehurst explained in his most oracular manner, that nothing was more impossible, than for people coming from foreign parts to arrive on the day they fix, - because they are dependent on the winds and the waves which are not under the control of any body: when, unluckily for Peter's theory, on the appointed evening - but when it was quite dark, two travelling-carriages drove rapidly through the town, and turned up the avenue leading to the Manor House."