What's the difference between alarm and fray?

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.

Fray


Definition:

  • (n.) Affray; broil; contest; combat.
  • (v. t.) To frighten; to terrify; to alarm.
  • (v. t.) To bear the expense of; to defray.
  • (v. t.) To rub; to wear off, or wear into shreds, by rubbing; to fret, as cloth; as, a deer is said to fray her head.
  • (v. i.) To rub.
  • (v. i.) To wear out or into shreads, or to suffer injury by rubbing, as when the threads of the warp or of the woof wear off so that the cross threads are loose; to ravel; as, the cloth frays badly.
  • (n.) A fret or chafe, as in cloth; a place injured by rubbing.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The appointment of the mayor of London's brother, who formally becomes a Cabinet Office minister, is one of a series of moves designed to strengthen the political operation in Downing Street and to patch up the prime minister's frayed links with the Conservative party.
  • (2) In comparison with the controls, the isoproterenol-treated (Group A), the Ca-treated (Group B), and the diltiazem-posttreated (Groups E and F) showed severe myocardial cell damage, such as sarcolemmal disruption, mitochondrial swelling, intramitochondrial electron-dense granules, membranous structures along mitochondrial cristae, thickening or close packing of the Z-lines, separation of cell junctions, frayed myofibrils, clumping of chromatin, and intracellular fluid accumulation.
  • (3) Carefully pull the frayed seam over the original seam line and pin in place.
  • (4) Miliband steps back into the fray as ex-Labour MP Chris Mullin said the party should bring back "grown ups" such as ex-chancellor Alistair Darling, while Tony Blair's former spin chief Alastair Campbell said Labour had made a mistake by failing to defend Gordon Brown's economic record.
  • (5) De Blasio and Bratton have promised to mend the frayed relations between police officers and the city's minority communities.
  • (6) Failing to get her voice heard above the fray is the biggest danger.
  • (7) On the frayed, far south-western outskirts of Bogotá, the largest, poorest and most violent barrio in the Colombian capital stretches into the haze up the mountainside as far as the eye can see.
  • (8) But when I check in a week later, at the height of the expenses storm, the optimism is sounding a tad frayed.
  • (9) These included torn or frayed menisci and those which were displaced, usually in a mesial direction.
  • (10) The shops on Main Street were mostly empty, paint fraying on the window panes.
  • (11) The fraying may be a consequence of proteolytic processing of the precursor of the inhibitor protein during entry into the mitochondrion.
  • (12) Relations between the bank and the Cambodian government have frayed over plans by a property developer to fill in a lake in the middle of Phnom Penh to build luxury flats and high-end shops.
  • (13) The Al Ahly ultras say they will rejoin the fray when the time is right.
  • (14) If you only have an 20cm tin you can use that instead, but don't use all the batter – about 80% will suffice – otherwise you'll end up with a volcanic overspill, cake soldered to the floor of the oven and a frayed temper.
  • (15) Laszlo Andor, the EU's employment commissioner, warned that record unemployment and fraying welfare systems in southern Europe risk creating a new divide in the continent.
  • (16) But we may be permitted to hope there is now a chance that something of the old Canada, committed to moderation and multiculturalism at home and to multilateralism and cooperation abroad, will re-emerge from the fray.
  • (17) Type II alveolar cells increased in number and showed vacuolization, fraying and membrane disruption of their lamellar inclusions.
  • (18) But it's fair to say a fondness for sniping games marks me out as a coward who'd rather take potshots from a distance than actually climb down from the tree and enter the fray like a man, a theory backed up by the fact that while I love sniping, I detest "stealth games" (because it's scary when you get caught) and "boss fights" where you have to battle some gargantuan show-off 10 times your height who keeps knocking you on your arse with his tail.
  • (19) Now that Obama has thrown the dice and joined the fray in Syria, Britain will feel increasing pressure to do more to help.
  • (20) Both dyed and undyed sutures were consistently better than surgical gut with respect to pliability, strength, ease of passage, ease of tying, fraying, knot security, and overall handling.