false alarm
23
3.5
- noun
- /fɔls əˈlɑrm/
:
alarma falsa
- When the fire alarm rang, it turned out to be a false alarm and there was no fire.
- rate of false alarms
However, it took a sudden U-turn when it became apparent by the end of the year that the whole thing was a false alarm.
- However, it took a sudden U-turn when it became apparent by the end of the year that the whole thing was a false alarm.
- And there had have been recorded cases of false alarms.
- Nobody's saying this is a false alarm.
- They have no idea whether that is a false alarm or a real real world like activity.
Examples
-
Repeated false alarms may cost less than a single failure to respond when the danger is great.
Academic text (1999) -
I don't think it's a false alarm.
-
Nine times out of ten, it's a false alarm.
-
It's probably a false alarm.
-
At first, I thought it was a false alarm too...
Fiction book (1995) -
But it would be a false alarm, of course.
Fiction book (1994) -
These false alarms happen all the time.
-
There were also a few false alarms in the first weeks of the war.
Academic text (1993) -
By then, we had had many false alarms.
Fiction book (1993) -
It's a false alarm.
Antonyms
How Serious
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'false' (not real/unfounded) modifies 'alarm' (a warning), so together they denote a warning that turns out to be unfounded. This adjective+noun pattern is straightforward and cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can reliably infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
The phrase false alarm comes from old warning bells: if an alarm rang by mistake and there was 'no danger', people rushed out for nothing. So today a false alarm means a warning that is 'not true'.