alarum

English

Etymology

From Middle English alarom, from Old Italian all'arme (“to arms, to the weapons”), from Latin arma, armorum (“weapons”).

Noun

alarum (plural alarums)

1. (normally archaic) A danger signal or warning.
   • 1912 (date written), [George] Bernard Shaw, “(please specify the page)”, in Androcles and the Lion, Overruled, Pygmalion, London: Constable and Company, published 1916, →OCLC:

     The rest is the irreducible minimum of poverty's needs: […] an American alarum clock on the shelf above the unused fireplace […]

   • 1963, Margery Allingham, “Eye Witness”, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC, page 249:

     The story struck the depressingly familiar note with which true stories ring in the tried ears of experienced policemen. […] The second note, the high alarum, not so familiar and always important since it indicates the paramount sin in Man's private calendar, took most of them by surprise although they had been well prepared.

   • 2008 December 9, Jeff Jacoby, “Skepticism on climate change”, in The International Herald Tribune‎^[1], →ISSN:

     Just another forum, then, sounding the usual alarums on the looming threat from global warming?

2. A call to arms.
   • c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii], page 131, column 1:

     Alarum within.

     (stage direction)

   • 1969, Michael Arlen, Living Room War

     It seems to me that by the same process they are also made less "real" - distinguished, in part, by the physical size of the television screen, which, for all the industry's advances, still shows one a picture of men three inches tall shooting at other men three inches tall, and trivialized, or at least tamed, by the enveloping cozy alarums of the household.

   • 2016, Christopher Kelly, The Pink Bus. Mapple Shade, New Jersey: Lethe Press. p. 95.

     On the cable news channels, especially, there were teary-eyed interviews with bystanders; alarums from both the gun control advocates on the one side and the Second Amendment nuts on the other; and--inevitably, inappropriately--debates over what the shooting might mean for this closely-watched Senate race.

Derived terms

• alarums and excursions

Verb

alarum (third-person singular simple present alarums, present participle alaruming, simple past and past participle alarumed)

1. (archaic) To sound alarums, to sound an alarm.
   • c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i], page 136, column 1:

     Now o're the one halfe World / Nature ſeemes dead, and wicked Dreames abuſe / The Curtain'd ſleepe: Witchcraft celebrates / Pale Heccats Offrings: and wither'd Murther, / Alarum'd by his Centinell, the Wolfe, / Whoſe howle's his Watch, thus with his ſtealthy pace, / With Tarquins rauiſhing ſides, towards his deſigne / Moues like a Ghoſt.

Usage notes

• Alarum is an old spelling of alarm (as a noun or a verb), which has stayed around as a deliberate archaism. Possibly it is retained because of its use in Shakespeare's plays.

See also

• alarm

Anagrams

• marula

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Latin

Noun

(deprecated template usage) ālārum f

1. genitive plural of āla