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Glite Dictionary
Emergency Alert System

Emergency Alert System

1 3.3
A national system that lets officials send emergency warnings on radio and television
  • noun
  • /ɪˈmɜrdʒənsi əˈlɜrt ˈsɪstəm/
  • Formal
translation icon : Sistema de Alerta de Emergencia
  • This is a test of the Emergency Alert System.
  • use the Emergency Alert System

Examples

  • During the national test of the Emergency Alert System, radio and television broadcasts were briefly interrupted.

  • Kristen believes Twitter definitely has the potential to be used as an emergency alert system.

    Blog text (11)

  • Authorities used the Emergency Alert System to inform residents of the impending hurricane.

  • The local news station interrupted regular programming to broadcast an urgent message through the Emergency Alert System.

Synonyms

EAS
vsEmergency Alert System
  • US
1 6.2

A US system that sends emergency warnings to people across the country by radio and TV

is the full official name used in formal references rather than the short form

How Broad

Emergency Alert System
  • Formal
1 3.3

Surface Forms

Emergency Alert System singular

Morphology

emergency + alert + system

The meaning is directly and transparently built from 'emergency' (urgent incident) + 'alert' (warning) + 'system' (organized set of components), so a learner who knows those words can infer it is a system that issues warnings about emergencies. This compositional pattern is common across languages, so a B1 learner would grasp the general function even if they might not know the specific U.S. institutional details.

Etymology

Emergency Alert System comes from the simple image of a system that sends an alert when there is an emergency. Imagine a loud tone cutting into every radio and TV to 'warn' people at once. That is why the phrase means a way to send emergency messages to many people quickly.