Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use panic in a sentence

40 example sentences · adjective, noun, verb

Panic means of fear, fright, etc: overwhelming or sudden. Example: “When the alarm went off I sought the exit in a panic.”

Examples of panic by meaning

adjectiveOf fear, fright, etc: overwhelming or sudden.

  • At that moment a flight of birds passed close overhead, and at the whirr of their wings a panic fear seized her.1978, Lawrence Durrell, “Lord Galen’s Farewell”, in Livia: Or Buried Alive […] (The Avignon Quintet; 2), London; Boston, Mass.: Faber and...

nounOverwhelming fear or fright, often affecting groups of people or animals; (countable) an instance of this; a fright, a...

  • There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind, and as we drove away Tom was feeling the hot whips of panic.1925, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, chapter 7, in The Great Gatsby, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, published 1953, →ISBN, page 125
  • Meanwhile Nanny Broome was recovering from her initial panic and seemed anxious to make up for any kudos she might have lost, by exerting her personality to the utmost.1963, Margery Allingham, “Meeting Point”, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC, page 232
  • He leapt along the corridor in a panic, stopping by the long-case clock at the end where he flattened himself against the wall.1994, Stephen Fry, chapter 2, in The Hippopotamus, New York, N.Y.: Soho Press, →ISBN, page 33

verbTo cause (someone) to feel panic (“overwhelming fear or fright”); also, to frighten (someone) into acting hastily.

  • Then I'd come round the corner and hailed him, and that panicked him.1927 October, Rudyard Kipling, “Fairy-Kist”, in Limits and Renewals, Dominions edition, London: Macmillan and Co., […], published 1932...

verbTo cause (a computer system) to crash.

  • If your new driver has an error that panics the system when you load the driver, then the system will panic again when it tries to reboot after the panic.2010, Solaris system engineers, “Managing Devices”, in Solaris 10 System Administration Essentials (Solaris System Administration Series)...

verbTo feel panic, or overwhelming fear or fright; to freak out, to lose one's head.

  • I don't want you to be hopeful, I want you to panic.2019 January 25, 5:22 from the start, in Our House is on Fire, spoken by Greta Thunberg, Davos, Graubünden, Switzerland: World Economic...

More sentences with panic

  • When the alarm went off I sought the exit in a panic.From the entry seek
  • Whenever he was behind the wheel, he would panic at the first sign of a breakdown.From the entry breakdown
  • As the water level began to rise, I was gripped by panic.From the entry grip
  • For God's sake man, stop panicking and get a grip of yourself!From the entry grip
  • The bogeyman of a Halloween-candy poisoner behind every door has animated occasional moral panics against trick-or-treating.From the entry bogeyman
  • Financial panic, earthquakes, oil spills, riots. What comes next?From the entry next
  • In times of financial panic, cash is king.From the entry king
  • Be cool. There's no need to panic.From the entry cool
  • Keep calm! There's no need to panic.From the entry keep
  • The alarm system tripped, throwing everyone into a panic.From the entry trip
  • Don't panic! Reinforcements are on the way.From the entry on the way
  • Some people experience tunnel vision during a panic attack.From the entry tunnel vision
  • There was a client who was critical of me a few weeks back and it set off a panic attack.From the entry panic attack
  • Don't ask Mary to drive you there, because she has a thing about highway driving. It sometimes gives her panic attacks.From the entry have a thing
  • The sight cued off a panic attack.From the entry cue off
  • Any epidemic outbreak causes understandable panic.From the entry outbreak
  • When we found you on the street, your behavior was all erratic and it seemed like you were having a panic attack.From the entry erratic
  • I had a bad trip on shrooms where got a panic attack so bad, I called the paramedics to check on me.From the entry bad trip
  • Her upbringing had been so chaste that her first experience French kissing ended in a panicked dash to the Piggly Wiggly to buy a home pregnancy test, just in case.From the entry chaste
  • Visibly panicked, both split up and began scouring the parking lot and the building’s perimeter.2026 July 25, Nicholas Muhoro, “The Last Call of Jo-Anne Pedersen, the Girl Who Vanished From a Payphone”, in Skip Boring, archived from…. From the entry scour
  • The truth panic had the unwelcome side-effect of emboldening those it sought to oppose.2025 October 2, William Davies, “A critique of pure stupidity: understanding Trump 2.0”, in The Guardian. From the entry fake
  • Those exposed to the weapon experience sharp ear pain, disorientation and panic, security experts say.2025 March 17, “Calls in Serbia for independent investigation into claims of a sonic device attack at peaceful rally”, in CNN, sourced…. From the entry eardrum
  • Unlike classical demand-pull or cost-push inflation, warflation is deeply intertwined with geopolitical uncertainty and market panic behaviour.2025 June 17, Dr. S. K. Prakash, “Warflation adds to woes of economy”, in Industrial Economist. From the entry warflation
  • The panic also spread to YouTube, an important source of income for many exiled dissidents, including Li.2024 March 18, Nectar Gan and Yong Xiong, “A dissident in Europe is enraging Beijing. Now Chinese police are coming for his social media…. From the entry dissident
  • He watched confusion start to flicker in her eyes , followed by a flutter of panic.2024, Carol Marinelli, Bride Under Contract, Harlequin. From the entry flicker
  • Moral panics have existed since well before the Salem witch trials — perhaps the paradigm case.2023 June 29, Pamela Paul, “Do Not Panic. It’s Just a Moral Panic.”, in The New York Times, →ISSN. From the entry moral panic
  • There's copium all around, panicked posters, and soothing souls advising everyone to buy the dip.2022 May 11, Matthew Gault, “Crypto Is Collapsing (For Now)”, in VICE, archived from the original on 13 May 2023. From the entry copium
  • People with acrophobia will experience panic and sudden anxiety in a variety of situations involving heights.2021 March 3, Sarah Bence; Steven Gans, MD (medical reviewer), “What Is Acrophobia?”, in Verywell Health, archived from the original on 30…. From the entry acrophobia
  • Incredible power, but whenever they're under duress, they panic and forget +90% of what they can do.2021 May 31, Cityman, “[Star wars] Kyle katarn VS. Kylo ren?”, in reddit.com, archived from the original on 18 Aug 2026. From the entry Elsa
  • Crypto currencies were also being panic sold at alarming rates as well.2021 December 25, Malik McCotter-Jordan, PRACTICAL MONEY ADVICE FOR YOUNG MEN 2.0: Learn How To Increase Your Income and Manage Your Money…. From the entry panic sell
  • Aislyn presses back against her house’s front door, panting a little with an incipient panic attack.2020, N. K. Jemisin, The City We Became, Orbit, page 405. From the entry incipient
  • He can hear a man's footsteps running and crying out in panic from a distance.2020, Andrew Cooper, Untitled, Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 16. From the entry franticly
  • Does your canine companion panic when you bring out the vacuum cleaner?2020 August 10, @Frederi74687757, X, archived from the original on 24 Apr 2026. From the entry zuigerphobia

Meaning of panic

  1. adjective Of fear, fright, etc: overwhelming or sudden.
  2. adjective Pertaining to or resulting from overwhelming fear or fright.
  3. noun Overwhelming fear or fright, often affecting groups of people or animals; (countable) an instance of this; a fright, a scare.

Full definition of panic

Questions about panic in a sentence

How do you use panic in a sentence?
Panic is used as an adjective, noun and verb. For example: “When the alarm went off I sought the exit in a panic.”
What is a short sentence with panic?
“Any epidemic outbreak causes understandable panic.”
What does panic mean?
Panic means of fear, fright, etc: overwhelming or sudden.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: panic (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use panic in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/panic. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.