How to Use false alarm in a Sentence

false alarm

noun
  • A false alarm drew firefighters to the school.
  • 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.
  • The call turned out to be a false alarm.
    — Holly Yan, CNN Money, 8 Aug. 2025
  • But Bergquist has seen some false alarms.
    — Leah Asmelash, CNN Money, 21 Aug. 2025
  • The message turned out to be a false alarm.
    — David W. Brown, New Yorker, 6 Apr. 2026
  • No one knows for sure, and this may all turn out to be a false alarm.
    — Caitlin Long, Forbes, 4 June 2022
  • The radar blips were satellites; the alert was a false alarm.
    — Daniel A. Gross, The New Yorker, 17 Jan. 2025
  • To be sure, there have been false alarms in high yield before.
    — Gunjan Banerji, WSJ, 4 Oct. 2018
  • That false alarm didn’t stop Raney from coaching.
    — Greg Riddle, Dallas Morning News, 2 Apr. 2026
  • One such false alarm almost caused a crash from the car behind.
    — Timothy B. Lee, Ars Technica, 5 Nov. 2019
  • Now, there’s a chance that these detections are false alarms.
    — Jackie Appel, Popular Mechanics, 22 Feb. 2023
  • It can’t be ignored, because many of the alerts are not false alarms.
    — Michelle Castillo, CNBC, 12 Sep. 2024
  • There was a false alarm when someone thought a new mattress was the wrong size.
    — Susannah Jacob, The New Yorker, 24 Feb. 2021
  • Heads up that putting them near a fireplace, bathroom, or kitchen could cause a false alarm.
    — Quincy Bulin, Better Homes & Gardens, 11 Aug. 2023
  • The girl will be filed on in juvenile court for making false alarms.
    — cleveland, 27 Feb. 2020
  • Hanabusa used the false alarm as a key camapaign issue against Ige.
    — Amy Lieu, Fox News, 12 Aug. 2018
  • Petrov believed the incident to be a false alarm, and stood by his call.
    — Alex Hollings, Popular Mechanics, 7 Nov. 2018
  • Not really a problem, more of a false alarm.
    — Literary Hub, 12 Jan. 2026
  • Search crews have responded to at least two false alarms since the search began.
    — Corey Arwood, USA TODAY, 18 Aug. 2019
  • Their low base rates mean that a positive test is more likely to be a false alarm.
    — Clayton Dalton, The New Yorker, 16 Sep. 2020
  • And ultimately, all of this was a false alarm.
    — Dan Goodin, ArsTechnica, 4 Sep. 2025
  • But those tests fail to detect many cancers, and also send up a lot of false alarms.
    — Melissa Healy, latimes.com, 22 Mar. 2018
  • This certainly isn't the first time false alarms and push alerts have sparked panic.
    — Jennifer Leman, Popular Mechanics, 13 Jan. 2020
  • While those concerns were a false alarm, the risk of a real outbreak hangs over the lake.
    — Christiaan Hetzner, Fortune, 17 Aug. 2024
  • Her April fever had been a false alarm — just a teething baby — but this was the real thing.
    — Star Tribune, 2 Oct. 2020
  • The economy has had false alarms over the past several years.
    — David Goldman, CNN Money, 20 Nov. 2025
  • The man left after squads departed from what truned out to be a false alarm not a burglary.
    — Karen Pilarski, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 20 Dec. 2017
  • Fraud tools trained on human behavior might miss signals or raise too many false alarms.
    — Jeffrey Highman, Forbes.com, 18 June 2026
  • The command sent out its own message correcting the false alarm.
    — Cecilia Kang, New York Times, 30 Jan. 2018

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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