Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A sound warning of danger.
  • noun A commotion.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To alarm, frighten, or warn with noise.
  • noun Alarm; a warning sound; a noise giving notice of danger.
  • noun An alarm-clock or alarm-watch.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun See alarum, and alarm.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Obsolete form of alarum.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English larum- (as in larumbelle, bell sounded for a call to arms), short for alarum; see alarum.]

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Examples

  • His invention has not made so much noise and larum in the world as some others, which have an origin quite as humble and unromantic; but it is one to which we owe no small profit, and a great deal of pleasure; and, as such, we are bound to speak of it with all gratitude and respect.

    The Paris Sketch Book 2006

  • Our board was full of words like larum and girn and ghat and revet.

    VANISHING ACTS JODI PICOULT 2005

  • Our board was full of words like larum and girn and ghat and revet.

    Vanishing Acts Picoult, Jodi, 1966- 2005

  • Our board was full of words like larum and girn and ghat and revet.

    VANISHING ACTS JODI PICOULT 2005

  • Our board was full of words like larum and girn and ghat and revet.

    VANISHING ACTS JODI PICOULT 2005

  • The spry rattle had run on in the same vein of mimicry but for some larum in the antechamber.

    Ulysses 2003

  • He has a tremendous larum at his bed's head, and turns out every day at five o'clock in imitation of Paley.

    The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 19, No. 530, January 21, 1832 Various

  • Is it not possible that _larum_ and _Lärm_ are imitations of the stroke and subsequent resonance of a large bell?

    Notes and Queries, Number 46, September 14, 1850 Various

  • The spry rattle had run on in the same vein of mimicry but for some larum in the antechamber.

    Ulysses James Joyce 1911

  • As we went, we heard the continually renewed larum of a landrail in the long grass.

    Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women 1905

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