Idioms

cry havoc

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cry havoc

To sound a warning or alarm of impending chaos, danger, or disaster. "Havoc" was originally a military order in the Middle Ages for soldiers to pillage and cause destruction; it features most famously in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war." The governor cried havoc as the protest became increasingly violent. With the hurricane approaching the city, officials cried havoc and urged citizens to seek shelter. If there's even a chance of a blizzard happening, you need to cry havoc now so people don't get trapped here.
See also: cry, havoc
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2024 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.

cry havoc

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.
See also: cry, havoc
The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 2003, 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

cry havoc

To sound an alarm; warn.
See also: cry, havoc
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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References in periodicals archive
As the components I chose were not on the approved list from Cry Havoc, I found that the supplied gas tube was perhaps l/8th inch too long to allow the barrel to mate with the receiver.
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Adams' immediate build-up to the opening game has included reading Henry V, the apt story of a patriotic leader who overcomes a troubled youth to fulfil his destiny at the battle of Agincourt amid the call to "cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war".
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Workshop attendees are reassured that they won't have to learn reams of text, nor will they be leaping on desks urging underlings to "cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war".
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To misquote William Shakespeare, "Cry havoc! And let loose the dogs of war!
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Equally fitting was the resonant quote from Shakespeare in Laughing Lions: the phrase "Cry havoc," which should be completed, as in Julius Caesar, "let slip the dogs of war."
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Unable to see themselves as members of a national collectivity, the product of one polity larger than a tribe, together they cry havoc and together they rend the others' flesh.
South Sudan on the brink of collapse
(SKY MOVIES SCIFI/ HORROR) 4.45pm Cry Havoc. (PG) (1943) (b&w) Second World War drama, starring Margaret Sullavan.
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