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ALARMING
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Frightening because of an awareness of danger
Classified under:
Similar:
appalling; dismaying (causing consternation)
atrocious; frightful; horrible; horrifying; ugly (provoking horror)
awful; dire; direful; dread; dreaded; dreadful; fearful; fearsome; frightening; horrendous; horrific; terrible (causing fear or dread or terror)
baleful; forbidding; menacing; minacious; minatory; ominous; sinister; threatening (threatening or foreshadowing evil or tragic developments)
bloodcurdling; hair-raising; nightmarish (extremely alarming)
chilling; scary; shivery; shuddery (provoking fear terror)
creepy; creepy-crawly (causing a sensation as of things crawling on your skin)
formidable; redoubtable; unnerving (inspiring fear)
ghastly; grim; grisly; gruesome; macabre; sick (shockingly repellent; inspiring horror)
hairy (hazardous and frightening)
petrifying (paralyzing with terror)
stupefying (shocking with surprise and consternation)
terrific; terrifying (causing extreme terror)
Attribute:
alarm; consternation; dismay (fear resulting from the awareness of danger)
Antonym:
unalarming (not alarming; assuaging alarm)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
-ing form of the verb alarm
Context examples:
Pine Island Glacier has thinned and retreated at an alarming rate since 1992, when satellite observations first started.
(West Antarctica's largest glacier may have started retreating as early as the 1940s, NSF)
WMO spokeswoman Claire Nullis says the warming conditions prevailing over both the Arctic and the Antarctic are very alarming.
(World Meteorological Org.: Arctic Warming Appears Irreversible, VOA)
The world's largest colony of king penguins has declined by nearly 90 percent in 35 years, according to an alarming study published in Antarctic Science.
(Study: World's Largest King Penguin Colony Declines Sharply, VOA)
With almost every other man in the world, it would be an alarming prospect; but Edward's affection and constancy nothing can deprive me of I know.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
Emma watched her through the fluctuations of this speech, and saw no alarming symptoms of love.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
I see nothing alarming in the word.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
A report of a most alarming nature reached me two days ago.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
I took advantage of the opportunity, and told her that my old master, Van Helsing, the great specialist, was coming to stay with me, and that I would put her in his charge conjointly with myself; so now we can come and go without alarming her unduly, for a shock to her would mean sudden death, and this, in Lucy's weak condition, might be disastrous to her.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
What they found was alarming.
(Humans exposed to far more hormone-disrupting chemicals than thought, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)
While this attack lasted, the family lived in constant fear of a conflagration, for the odor of burning wood pervaded the house at all hours, smoke issued from attic and shed with alarming frequency, red-hot pokers lay about promiscuously, and Hannah never went to bed without a pail of water and the dinner bell at her door in case of fire.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
