Alarum (pronounced uh-lar-uhm or uh-lahr-uhm)
(1) An archaic variant of alarm, especially as a call to
arms.
(2) In literary classification, a work written in the
form of a warning.
(3) In the form “alarums and excursions”, a stage
direction used in Elizabethan theatre (used only in the plural).
1585–1595:
From the Middle English alarme & alarom, from the fourteenth century Old
French alarme, from the Old Italian all'arme (a call to arms (literally “to
the arms”) and understood in translation as “arm yourselves and prepare for
battle!”), from the Latin arma & armorum (arms, weapons) (from which
English ultimately gained armory). The Old Italian all'arme was a contraction of the phrase alle arme, alle a contraction
of a "to" (from the Latin ad)
+ le, from the Latin illas, the feminine accusative plural of
ille (the) coupled with arme, from the Latin arma (weapons (including armor),
literally "the tools or implements (of war)”), from the primitive
Indo-European root ar- (to fit
together). Beyond purely military use,
the interjection (which had once also been spelt all-arm) came by the late
sixteenth century to be a general to be both a “warning of any danger or need
to arouse” and the device generating the sound.
From the mid-fifteenth century it had conveyed a “state of fearful
surprise" while the weakened sense of “apprehension or unease” dates from 1833.
In England, alarm clocks were first
available in the 1690s and they were described as A Larum Clocks. Alarum is a noun, the present participle is alaruming,
the past participle alarumed; the noun plural is alarums.
The
phrase alarums and excursions (used only in the plural)
was a stage direction used in Elizabethan theatre drama. It instructed the actors to create a scene
suggesting military action, either by having them march across the stage,
blowing bugles and beating drums or, as the script directed, performing
fragments of a battle or other engagement.
In idiomatic use, it came to be used to allude to (1) the sounds and
activities associated with the preparations for war and (2) by extension, any
noisy, frantic, or disorganized activity.
Alarum
is the old spelling of the modern alarm (as a noun or a verb) which has in
literary classification retained a niche as a deliberate archaism, probably
because it’s one of those words (like aroint) which endures because it appears in
the works of Shakespeare. There’s also
some history of alarum as a poetic device where it’s deployed when the cadence
requires “alarm” to be pronounced with a rolling "r" (although it’s
not known if this was the practice in Middle English (and Shakespeare’s
placement gives no clue). Other than the
technical uses describe, alarum has no use in modern English and if used as a substitute
for alarm it will either confuse or be treated as a spelling mistake (which of
course it is).
In the
classification of non-fiction, an alarum is a work written as a warning. It can be in the form of a polemic, a history
or any other form and the label alarum is thus both a category and a
sub-category applied to other classifications.
In this the label works the same way as something like apologia which is
typically applied (not always with the agreement of the author) to memoirs and
the like.
No comments:
Post a Comment