ALARMING

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does alarming mean? 

• ALARMING (adjective)
  The adjective ALARMING has 1 sense:

1. frightening because of an awareness of danger

  Familiarity information: ALARMING used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ALARMING (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Frightening because of an awareness of danger

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)

 Context examples 

He really had no breath to spare, and it was very alarming to see him laugh.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The darkness of the forest had been alarming, but even worse was the white, still flood of moonlight in the open glade of the iguanodons.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I find you rather alarming, when I examine you close at hand: you talk of my being a fairy, but I am sure, you are more like a brownie.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Away they walked to the book; and while Isabella examined the names, it was Catherine's employment to watch the proceedings of these alarming young men.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Alarming sounds were heard; other visitors approached, and the door was thrown open for Sir Walter and Miss Elliot, whose entrance seemed to give a general chill.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

In the meantime he was making fresh and alarming discoveries concerning the magazines.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

On the third day my mother sickened; her fever was accompanied by the most alarming symptoms, and the looks of her medical attendants prognosticated the worst event.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

He had an alarming way now when he was drunk of drawing his cutlass and laying it bare before him on the table.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Each is now in a position to watch the other and to bring the experiment to an end should the symptoms seem alarming.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Scientists also predict an alarming scenario with large-scale extinctions in 30 years' time, if no action is taken.

(Species native to Brazil savanna likely to face extinction, Agência Brasil)