The all-clear is the signal that danger has passed. The siren that means you can come out now.
The phrase comes from air raids, where one note sounded the warning and another sounded the all-clear, and it has kept that shape ever since. Today you mostly meet it in medicine and in officialdom: the doctor gave her the all-clear, the building was given the all-clear after the alarm. It nearly always follows give or get, and the is almost always in front of it. What it really carries is relief, since it never arrives unless something worrying came first.
1nounall-clearA signal or message that danger is over, or that something is safe.
“The hospital rang to give him the all-clear.”
Practised in A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 10 of A Man Called Ove.
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