alarums and excursions

plural noun

1. (especially in Elizabethan drama) military action, as representative fragments of a battle, sound effects of trumpets, or clash of arms: used as a stage direction.

2. any noisy, frantic, or disorganized activity.

Word History and Origins

Origin of alarums and excursions¹

First recorded in 1585–95

Example Sentences

There will be alarums and excursions in the new politics.

Read more on BBC

This child of New York first arrived here in 1961 to join the cast of the then-two-year-old The Second City and appeared in two months-long revues, “Six of One” and “Alarums and Excursions,” and often hanging out at Playboy editor/publisher Hugh Hefner's mansion, before heading back home.

Read more on Chicago Tribune

After the alarums and excursions of the past, the remarkable thing is that Boyd and his team have accomplished all this with that rarest thing in theatreworld – a minimum of drama.

Read more on The Guardian

Vigorous blasts from ‘yards of tin’ arouse alarums and excursions, and bring faces to the hotel-windows, reminding one, together with the gold-laced red coat of the guard, of the true coaching age, so eloquently written of by that mighty historian of the road, C. J. Apperley, whom men called ‘Nimrod.’

Read more on Project Gutenberg

The development of communications and the settlement of the remoter regions will soon relegate such alarums and excursions as are here described to the romantic possibilities of the past.

Read more on Project Gutenberg