Amber Alert

Or AM·BER A·lert

[am-ber uh-lert]

Phonetic (Standard)IPA

noun

1. a public alert system that uses broadcast media, text messages, and electronic billboards to spread information about missing persons, especially children.
2. a public message or announcement that uses this system.

Amber alert

noun

a notification to the general public, such as by commercial radio or electronic traffic-condition signs, regarding an abduction of a child

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Word History and Origins

Origin of Amber Alert¹

Backronym from America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response; named after Amber Hagerman, a girl kidnapped and murdered in Texas in 1996

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Word History and Origins

Origin of Amber Alert¹

C20: named after Amber Hagerman , a child who was abducted and murdered in 1996 in Arlington, Texas

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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

Concern over blood stocks prompted the health service to issue an "amber alert" last year, meaning supplies were running low enough to have an impact on patient treatment.

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The appeal comes almost a year after the NHS issued an amber alert for only the second time in its history, last July.

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Last year, the National Crime Agency issued an amber alert warning that storage facilities for artwork could be used by criminals "seeking a capital asset that can be safely stored, that appreciates in value over time, and that can be liquidated if and when required".

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Networks should be blasting a version of an Amber Alert for Disappeared People, grabbed off the street and university campuses by masked agents, who shunt them off to another state or a brutal prison in El Salvador.

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The Dorset and Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service has issued their second amber alert of the year for fires, urging people not to use disposable barbecues or set campfires and to make sure cigarettes have been extinguished.

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amber amberfish

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