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(excerpt from Unfortunate English)
In an etymologically perfect world, no pacifists would have alarm clocks.
It's not that they need the extra sleep (and besides, snooze buttons take care of that concern).
Nor would pacifists have smoke alarms, or respond to fire alarms.
The pacifists might be surprised but certainly not alarmed to discover what that little beeping clock or the whining smoke detector or the shrieking fire siren are, in a sense, really shouting to them:
"To arms! To arms!"
The first use of alarm was a rally cry. "To the weapons!" shouted the ralliers, who, because they were Italian, actually shouted "All' arme!" The French borrowed the shout into Old French as "Alarme!", and by the late 1300s threatened English-speakers were also shouting thusly. Soon after the interjection came to English, it found its role as a noun describing the shout itself. By the late 1500s, the more general senses of both warning and warning device had come to alarm.
If nonviolent sorts choose not to be alarmed by this word's origin, perhaps they can instead be afraid in the original sense of the word. To affray people was to disturb them, alarm them. These people were affrayed, which we now use with different spelling and different meaning as afraid.
So, the original alarm was sounded as a rally to take weapon and make war. It was a battle cry. An alert to Medieval threat. Which is why when my alarm clock goes off I hack it to pieces with a halberd.
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