How to Use false alarm in a Sentence

false alarm

noun
Definition of false alarmnext
  • The report that the factory would be closing was a false alarm.
  • He thought he might be having a heart attack, but his chest pains were just a false alarm.
  • About 90 percent of ground sensor alerts were false alarms.
    — Lauren Etter, Bloomberg.com, 9 Apr. 2018
  • But the military later said a false alarm had set off air defense systems.
    — Fox News, 29 Apr. 2018
  • About 97 percent of those end up being false alarms, according to the city.
    — Staff, cleveland.com, 9 Apr. 2018
  • Many false alarms occurred during the nuclear age, ranging from the trivial to very serious.
    — Chas Newkey-Burden, The Week Uk, theweek, 22 Feb. 2024
  • The systems are designed to discard radar data about things that aren’t moving, to prevent false alarms for every overhead gantry or street-side trash can.
    — Jack Stewart, WIRED, 30 Mar. 2018
  • The fines are intended to cover the cost to the city of having police and fire personnel respond to false alarms, Stevens said.
    — Staff, cleveland.com, 9 Apr. 2018
  • At the same time, departments’ workloads have been increasing with false alarms, faulty fire detectors, and more medical calls.
    — Michaelle Bond, Philly.com, 7 May 2018
  • In other words, those early rodent cases of pancreatitis were probably a false alarm.
    — American College Of Lifestyle Medicine, EverydayHealth.com, 15 July 2024
  • Rumors of an Israeli attack eventually gave way to officials saying the threat was a false alarm.
    — Yonat Friling, Fox News, 17 Apr. 2018
  • But just imagine what would have taken place had a similar false alarm occurred in Pyongyang rather than Honolulu.
    — Scott D. Sagan, Foreign Affairs, 15 Oct. 2018
  • Some commenters under that post blame Truaxe for raising a false alarm and wasting emergency service resources.
    — Kathleen Hou, The Cut, 25 Apr. 2018
  • The false alarm occurred as part of an emergency training session, when an instructor was supposed to text a phone number as part of a simulation.
    — Sarah Freishtat, Aurora Beacon-News, 24 Apr. 2018
  • Eccentric but flat characters populate the pages, and false alarms pop up in every chapter with humdrum predictability.
    — Maureen Corrigan, Philly.com, 2 May 2018
  • Syria’s government is on alert for more American or Israeli strikes, and on Tuesday launched missiles and sounded air-raid sirens for what turned out to be a false alarm.
    — Rory Jones, WSJ, 17 Apr. 2018
  • The researchers found that this swath was easily detected by infrared sensors, and estimated a 99 percent chance of detecting a robot ray with a low chance of false alarms.
    — David Hambling, Popular Mechanics, 3 May 2018
  • This isn't the first time a false alarm has sparked panic.
    — Jennifer Leman, Popular Mechanics, 13 Jan. 2020
  • No one knows for sure, and this may all turn out to be a false alarm.
    — Caitlin Long, Forbes, 4 June 2022
  • Yet April came to a close with nothing but false alarms.
    — Samantha Leach, Glamour, 7 May 2019
  • To be sure, there have been false alarms in high yield before.
    — Gunjan Banerji, WSJ, 4 Oct. 2018
  • The false alarm charge carries a penalty of five years in prison and/or $5,000.
    — Thomas Goodwin Smith, Baltimore Sun, 1 Feb. 2024
  • Las Vegas must feel the Atlanta Hawks were a false alarm in 2021.
    — Ray Glier, Forbes, 13 Oct. 2021
  • There was a false alarm when someone thought a new mattress was the wrong size.
    — Susannah Jacob, The New Yorker, 24 Feb. 2021
  • Unlike in 2016, this isn’t a false alarm or a Lucy and the football moment.
    — Chuck Carlton, Dallas News, 26 Aug. 2021
  • One such false alarm almost caused a crash from the car behind.
    — Timothy B. Lee, Ars Technica, 5 Nov. 2019
  • Hanabusa used the false alarm as a key camapaign issue against Ige.
    — Amy Lieu, Fox News, 12 Aug. 2018
  • Her April fever had been a false alarm — just a teething baby — but this was the real thing.
    — Star Tribune, 2 Oct. 2020
  • Petrov believed the incident to be a false alarm, and stood by his call.
    — Alex Hollings, Popular Mechanics, 7 Nov. 2018
  • Now, there’s a chance that these detections are false alarms.
    — Jackie Appel, Popular Mechanics, 22 Feb. 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'false alarm.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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