What's the difference between alarm and bugbear?

Alarm


Definition:

  • (n.) A summons to arms, as on the approach of an enemy.
  • (n.) Any sound or information intended to give notice of approaching danger; a warning sound to arouse attention; a warning of danger.
  • (n.) A sudden attack; disturbance; broil.
  • (n.) Sudden surprise with fear or terror excited by apprehension of danger; in the military use, commonly, sudden apprehension of being attacked by surprise.
  • (n.) A mechanical contrivance for awaking persons from sleep, or rousing their attention; an alarum.
  • (v. t.) To call to arms for defense; to give notice to (any one) of approaching danger; to rouse to vigilance and action; to put on the alert.
  • (v. t.) To keep in excitement; to disturb.
  • (v. t.) To surprise with apprehension of danger; to fill with anxiety in regard to threatening evil; to excite with sudden fear.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) More evil than Clocky , the alarm clock that rolls away when you reach out to silence it, or the Puzzle Alarm , which makes you complete a simple puzzle before it'll go quiet, the Money Shredding Alarm Clock methodically destroys your cash unless you rouse yourself.
  • (2) Which must make yesterday's jobs figures doubly alarming for the coalition.
  • (3) Luciana Berger, Labour shadow secretary for mental health, also expressed alarm.
  • (4) The Cambridge-based couple felt ignored when tried to raise the alarm about the way their business – publisher Zenith – was treated by Lynden Scourfield, the former HBOS banker jailed last week, and David Mills’ Quayside Corporate Services.
  • (5) Not only was an alarming amount of fissile material going missing at the company, Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (Numec), but it had been visited by a veritable who's-who of Israeli intelligence, including Rafael Eitan, described by the firm as an Israeli defence ministry "chemist", but, in fact, a top Mossad operative who went on to head Lakam.
  • (6) Talking ahead of a UN climate summit in Peru next month, Kim said he was alarmed by World Bank-commissioned research from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, which said that as a result of past greenhouse gas emissions the world is condemned to unprecedented weather events.
  • (7) The most egregious failure was by WHO in the delay in sounding the alarm,” said Prof Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute.
  • (8) "We are alarmed to see the government is even wavering about continuing its programme of tracing, testing and destroying infected young ash trees.
  • (9) Privacy advocates argue this reflects an alarming ease of access, even though agencies should make every effort to ensure the invasion of privacy is justified by the importance to the public of solving a crime or recovering money.
  • (10) There was no looking back and as Hardouvelis nervously looked on – at times relieved, at times alarmed – it was quite clear that there was no stepping back either.
  • (11) Suffice to say, it was a long, difficult haul with various scares and alarms along the way.
  • (12) Severe overloading can increase microdamage alarmingly, its repair by BMUs too, and can cause woven bone formation, anarchic resorption and a regional acceleratory phenomenon.
  • (13) The literature on the possible risk of myasthenia gravis complicating pregnancy and delivery is sparse and partly contradictory but some of the reports on the number of perinatal and neonatal deaths are alarming.
  • (14) The second cause for alarm is more real – the insistence on imposing exemplary, or punitive, damages on those who don't join the regulator (and, in some circumstances, even those who do).
  • (15) The stimulus-response combination was classified into 4 categories according to SDT response: hits, misses, false alarms (FAs) and correct rejections (CRs).
  • (16) The interval distributions of neurons in isolated cerebral cortex resembled those of neurons in the intact cortex of an alarmed animal.
  • (17) The clinicians were asked to choose from a list the device that produced the alarm.
  • (18) On Monday, the interior minister, Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, said the alarm had been raised immediately, but local media have cited prison sources saying it took half an hour for police to begin the search for Guzmán.
  • (19) The bank's speciality in debt instruments such as mortgage-related securities caused alarm as early as last summer.
  • (20) in the US the last ten years have witnessed an alarming recrudescence involving vast strata of the population and especially children, although this is masked by the paucity of reports, as is the case also in Italy.

Bugbear


Definition:

  • (n.) Something frightful, as a specter; anything imaginary that causes needless fright; something used to excite needless fear; also, something really dangerous, used to frighten children, etc.
  • (n.) Same as Bugaboo.
  • (a.) Causing needless fright.
  • (v. t.) To alarm with idle phantoms.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) I doubt any of us have a real bugbear with the comedian himself, because bitterness and disappointment is something most of us can relate to on some level.
  • (2) This is the uncomfortable truth, of course, which, after four decades at the sharp end of the fertility industry, has become Grudzinskas' bugbear.
  • (3) One dev says: "My biggest bugbear at the moment (on my lowly 3GS) is the number of times app quit due to memory shortages, or because they've taken too long to load.
  • (4) Her serve has been her bugbear since her shoulder operation six years ago, and it is a mark of her grit that she has triumphed despite it.
  • (5) Gay ubiquity began to make it seem difficult for homophobes to travel anywhere interesting without encountering their bugbear.
  • (6) One of the bugbears among locals who hoped the Ridings would remain open is the fact that, in last week's secondary school league tables, it did considerably better than it has in the past: the number of pupils scoring five A*-C grades at GCSE in subjects including maths and English was up from 4% to 13%.
  • (7) Letting agents' fees are a bugbear of all the tenant campaign groups.
  • (8) That it was more than just a personal bugbear became clear in June 2013, when we learned that PennCAN, yet another so-called “school-reform” group focused on vouchers, privatization, and the destruction of public schooling, had financed a “secret poll” that encouraged Corbett to attack the PFT in hopes of gaining support ahead of his midterm reelection campaign.
  • (9) The EHRC has long been a bugbear for the Tory right who see it as a relic of the past.
  • (10) Painfully slow mobile internet connections have long been a bugbear for smartphone owners made to wait while trying to load a simple map or webpage.
  • (11) I haven’t got any problems with people at the FA, but that’s one of my bugbears.” Coulthard checks the walls of her house for a clue as to when England first played at Wembley.
  • (12) That's what politicians should be asking us to envisage when they set upon this bugbear with their big sticks: people on very low incomes earning a very small amount extra and not declaring it.
  • (13) The policy has helped to shape the landscape of diversity within higher education for 35 years, and has become an growing bugbear of the conservative right that sees it as a form of discrimination against white students.
  • (14) But the new performance management system, which is in its third year, is the major bugbear for most staff.
  • (15) After a pledge to pull the Tory party out of the main centre-right grouping in Brussels after the 2009 European elections backfired, Mr Cameron has largely ignored the issue of Europe - a bugbear for past Tory leaders from Margaret Thatcher onwards.
  • (16) The MPC appeared to have become more confident about the outlook for productivity, which has remained a bugbear of Britain’s post-crisis recovery.
  • (17) Much of the book is given over to how he got into campaigning for stem cell research, the hope of many Parkinson's sufferers and bugbear of the Christian right, which sees it as a moral equivalent to abortion.
  • (18) Among the biggest bugbears revealed in the consultation document – the draft ppdate guidance on green claims - are general, untestable claims like products being "eco-" or "environmentally friendly".
  • (19) Wendi not only has no voting position in the family trust (nor do her two children) and is quite a bugbear to the people who do, but she also hasn't had a job in almost 15 years.
  • (20) A chief bugbear of Van Gaal before this game had been that United needed to turn in a display for the full 90 minutes.