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.
   • 1931, [George] Bernard Shaw, “Pygmalion: A Romance in Five Acts”, in Androcles and the Lion. Overruled. Pygmalion, standard edition, London: Constable and Company, published 1951, →OCLC, Act I, page 212:

     These are the only visible luxuries: the rest is the irreducible minimum of poverty's needs: a wretched bed heaped with all sorts of coverings that have any warmth in them, a draped packing case with a basin and jug on it and a little looking glass over it, a chair and table, the refuse of some suburban kitchen, and an American alarum clock on the shelf above the unused fireplace: the whole lighted with a gas lamp with a penny in the slot meter.

   • 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. 1587–1588, [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire, London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act I, scene ii:

     Come let vs meet them at the mountain foot, / And with a ſodaine and an hot alarum / Driue all their horſes headlong down the hill.

   • 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:

     A 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, page 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

Latin

Noun

ālārum f

1. genitive plural of āla