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A summons to arms, as on the approach of an enemy. Arming to answer in a night alarm. Shak.

Easily alarmed or disturbed.

Aroused to vigilance; excited by fear of approaching danger; agitated; disturbed; as, an alarmed neighborhood; an alarmed modesty. The white pavilions rose and fell On the alarmed air. Longfellow.

In an alarmed manner.

Exciting, or calculated to excite, alarm; causing apprehension of danger; as, an alarming crisis or report. -- A*larm"ing*ly, adv.

One prone to sound or excite alarms, especially, needless alarms. Macaulay.

To startle from quiet; to alarm. Smale foules a great heap That had afrayed [affrayed] me out of my sleep. Chaucer.

To impress with sudden fear; to frighten; to alarm. Dreams affright our souls. Shak. A drear and dying sound Affrights the flamens at their service quaint. Milton.

Affright; the state of being frightened; sudden fear or alarm. [Archaic] Passionate words or blows . . . fill the child's mind with terror and affrightment. Locke.

See Alarm. [Now Poetic]

An alarm from a real or threatened attack; a sudden attack; also, a bugle sound to give warning. "We have had an alert." Farrow. On the alert, on the lookout or watch against attack or danger; ready to act.

In fire-alarm telegraphy, a system so arranged that when one alarm is being transmitted, no other alarm, sent in from another point, will be transmitted until after the first alarm has been disposed of.

r the automatic regulation of the temperature of rooms warmed artificially, and as a fire alarm. -- Balance of torsion. See Torsion Balance. -- Balance of trade (Pol. Econ.), an equilibrium between the money values of the exports and imports of a country; or more commonly, the amount required on one side or the other…

A signal fire; an alarm fire. Sweet Teviot! on thy silver tide The glaring balefires blaze no more. Sir W. Scott.

To give the signal for, by beat of drum; to sound by beat of drum; as, to beat an alarm, a charge, a parley, a retreat; to beat the general, the reveille, the tattoo. See Alarm, Charge, Parley, etc. To beat down, to haggle with (any one) to secure a lower price; to force down. [Colloq.] -- To beat into, to teach or ins…

te as if suddenly frightened, or in doubt, or impeded by unforeseen difficulties; to take alarm; to exhibit hesitancy and indecision. We start and boggle at every unusual appearance. Glanvill. Boggling at nothing which serveth their purpose. Barrow.

To make a hollow sound, as of waves or cannon. Alarm guns booming through the night air. W. Irving.

To alarm with idle phantoms.

One guilty of the crime of burglary. Burglar alarm, a device for giving alarm if a door or window is opened from without.

y have a sack of inklike fluid which they discharge from the siphon tube, when pursued or alarmed, in order to confuse their enemies. Their shell is a thin horny plate, within the flesh of back, shaped very much like a quill pen. In America they are called squids. See Squid.