cry havoc

Idioms  

1. Sound an alarm or warning, as in In his sermon the pastor cried havoc to the congregation's biases against gays. The noun havoc was once a command for invaders to begin looting and killing the defenders' town. Shakespeare so used it in Julius Caesar (3:1): “Cry 'Havoc' and let slip the dogs of war.” By the 19th century the phrase had acquired its present meaning.

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Example Sentences

They must have known those they had abandoned would cry havoc.

From New York Times • Apr. 21, 2021

The very quality that enriches the vocabulary--its undiscriminating tolerance for the new--obliges dictionary editors to acknowledge such a gallimaufry of new words and phrases that even the most casual browser wants to cry havoc.

From Time Magazine Archive

Pittsfield, Mass, was the first to cry havoc.

From Time Magazine Archive

Witness Claiborne Deming, Murphy's CEO, who doesn't see the science of global warming as solid enough yet to cry havoc.

From Time Magazine Archive

It is somewhat cruel, if not brutal, to cry havoc over Mr. Ruskin's tender "lichens that lay quiet finger on the trembling stones, to teach them rest."

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 95, September 1865 by Various