1 [U] fear and anxiety that sb feels when sth dangerous or unpleasant might happen:
'What have you done?' Ellie cried in alarm. * I felt a growing sense of alarm when he did not return that night. * The doctor said there was no cause for alarm.
2 [C,usually sing.] a loud noise or a signal that warns people of danger or of a problem:
She decided to sound the alarm (= warn people that the situation was dangerous). * I hammered on all the doors to raise the alarm. * By the time the alarm was raised the intruders had escaped.
seealsoFALSEALARM
3 [C] a device that warns people of a particular danger:
a burglar / fire / smoke alarm * The cat set off the alarm (= made it start ringing). * A car alarm went off in the middle of the night (= started ringing).
4 = ALARMCLOCK:
The alarm went off at 7 o'clock.
IDIOMS
alarm bells ring / start ringing if you say that alarm bells are ringing, you mean that people are starting to feel worried and suspicious:
The government's proposal has set alarm bells ringing for people on low incomes.
Part of speech: verb
1 to make sb anxious or afraid:
[VN] The captain knew there was an engine fault but didn't want to alarm the passengers. [also VNtoinf]
2 [VN] to fit sth such as a door with a device that warns people when sb is trying to enter illegally
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for alarm is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is alarm a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, alarm is tagged as noun.
Does alarm appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — alarm appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
