English · Idiom Candidate

press the panic button

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

To overreact or take sudden action in a stressful situation

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

phản ứng quá mức hoặc hành động đột ngột trong tình huống căng thẳng

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: activate a button to signal emergency

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

Two defeats in their six home games is hardly what the fans expect but Flynn isn't pressing the panic button.

‘ The very thought of it makes me want to press the panic button, crawl under the bed and call for HRT,’ says one friend.

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.

Common questions

What does “press the panic button” mean?

To overreact or take sudden action in a stressful situation Literally: activate a button to signal emergency

Is “press the panic button” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.