alarm
Pluralalarms
Pluralalarms
Formsalarms, alarming, alarmed
- 1A device designed to warn people of approaching danger or a threat.
The factory installed a gas alarm in every section of the plant.
A flood alarm by the river warns residents when the water rises.
- 2A device, such as a wind-up or bedside clock, that sounds to wake a sleeper or to attract attention.
He relied on a wind-up alarm because his room had no electricity.
The bedside alarm dragged her out of a deep sleep.
- 3A sound or piece of information meant to give notice of approaching danger and arouse attention.
Word of the landslide reached the camp as a frantic alarm passed from tent to tent.
The sentry's alarm sent the whole household scrambling toward the cellar.
Note
The warning itself, apart from whatever produces it. The verbs that travel with it are sound and spread: the King James Bible of 1611 has "Sound an alarm in my holy mountain," and Dickens, in The Haunted House (1859), has a woman who "invented many of the alarms she spread." In that plural the word covers false reports as readily as true ones.
- 4A ringing, beeping, or clanging signal sounded at a set time.
A shrill alarm rang out across the ward at exactly noon.
The alarm clanged twice, marking the change of shifts.
Note
The signal, not the machine: the thing you set and the thing that goes off. "Set the alarm on your watch to go off at seven" shows the everyday frame, with set for the arranging and go off for the sounding. Kept apart from the waking device, it names the ringing event, which is why one clock can hold several alarms.
- 5Sudden fear or distress caused by the awareness of approaching danger.
A ripple of alarm passed through the crowd when the lights failed.
She felt a surge of alarm at the sound of breaking glass downstairs.
Similarfear, anxiety, panic, fright, dread
Note
Here the alarm has moved inside the person. It becomes a mass noun for fear that spreads through a crowd, as in Macaulay's "Alarm and resentment spread through the camp," and it pairs naturally with other states of mind. In military writing it keeps a narrower edge: the sudden suspicion of a surprise attack, not general unease.
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- 7To give someone notice of approaching danger and rouse them to vigilance.
The watchman hurried to alarm the village before the raiders reached the gate.
Scouts alarmed the camp the moment they saw torches on the ridge.
Note
A warning that makes someone act, not just worry. It takes a person or group as its object and can carry a result with into: a sudden drop in temperature "should alarm you into taking precautions." In Le Fanu's 1838 story, two men "alarmed by the obstreperous barking" of a chained dog are roused to come out, not terrified. When fright is the point, the meaning has shifted to the sense of frightening.
- 8Of a device, to give out a warning signal of approaching danger or of action needed, meant to put whoever receives it on the alert.
Monitors on the ward alarm whenever a patient's heart rate drops too low.
The wind-shear sensors kept alarming throughout the storm, so the tower held all departures.
Note
A technical use in which the device is the subject and usually nothing follows the verb. A National Transportation Safety Board report of 1985 says a wind-shear system "frequently alarms" during thunderstorms, meaning it sounds its warning. The use fits control rooms and monitoring equipment. In general prose it can read as jargon, and "the alarm went off" or "sounded" is the safer choice.
- 9A sudden hostile attack or outbreak of disturbance.
A fierce alarm struck the town walls in the dead of night.
Repeated alarms along the frontier wore down the border companies.
Note
An older, rougher meaning: not the warning but the trouble that provokes it. Shakespeare has officers-at-arms ready to direct "these home alarms," and Elijah Fenton's Odyssey (1725) has suitors filling a palace "with insults and alarms." Set beside insults, the word plainly means raids and uproar. A modern reader can easily mistake it for the feeling of fright.
- 10A summons calling people to take up arms at the approach of an enemy.
When the beacons blazed, the alarm summoned every able man to the walls.
The captain gave the alarm, and the garrison rushed to its posts.
Similaralert
Note
The cry the whole word grew from: Middle French alarme, from Old Italian all'arme!, "to arms!", ultimately Latin arma, "weapons." Every later alarm, from the bell to the clock to the jolt of fear, descends from a shout that sent soldiers for their weapons. Shakespeare's men are still "arming to answer in a night alarm," where the word is the summons itself, not the feeling it causes.
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Origin
It comes from Middle English alarme, borrowed from Middle French alarme, which came from the Old Italian all'arme! ("to arms!, to the weapons!"), ultimately from Latin arma ("arms, weapons").