hit the panic button

panic | Business English

panic
noun[ C or U ]
uk /ˈpænɪk/us
a sudden strong feeling of fear that prevents reasonable thought and action:
panic about/over sthThere is no cause for panic about oil prices.
a state/wave of panicThe government was in a state of panic.
cause/trigger panicThe drop in prices could cause panic among investors.
There is no sense of panic yet or any feeling that this is the start of a long-term decline in the pound.
panic
verb[ I or T ]
uk /ˈpænɪk/uspanicking | panicked | panicked
to suddenly feel so worried or frightened that you cannot think or behave reasonably, or to cause someone to feel this:
There is no need for home buyers to panic.
panic about/over sthShould people with savings panic about the safety of their money?
Oil producers were panicked by the drop in oil prices.
panic sb into doing sthThe delay in consumer spending means that shops may be panicked into cutting prices.
panic
adjective[ before noun ]
uk /ˈpænɪk/us
resulting from a feeling of panic:
panic buying/sellingPanic buying has led to fears that almost half the gas stations could run out of fuel by tomorrow.
a panic measure/reactionThe private meeting was a panic reaction to the news of the merger.

Examples of panic

panic
The stock market is the home not just of paper assets but of self-fulfilling prophecies and crowd panics.
They both, in rather different ways, show that governments have panicked and exaggerated the cost implications of disabled and older societies.
People panicked and ran away, but left on the ground outside the polling station were two dead women and several injured.
Nobody was hurt, but the congregation panicked and stampeded for the exit.
At the same time, they tried to escape - in fact, they panicked.
Two types of theories have been advanced to explain bank panics.
The possibility of bank panics also implies that agents in need of liquidity have to suffer relative to those not in need.
The existence of a credible state insurance fund, he believed, would eliminate the fear that drove bank runs and contagious panics.
Cycling was at the centre of a number of social panics.
The power of the media to generate moral panics must not be underestimated.
As the nineteenth century wore on, banking panics continued to strike on a fairly regular basis.
With bank failures relatively rare and full-blown panics a thing of the past, critics have increasingly focused on the moral hazard that deposit insurance spawns.
Despite official advice to stay calm and to avoid medical facilities unless ill or injured, the entire city panics.
If they focus on short run macroeconomic stabilization (avoiding a credit crunch) they may increase the probability of bank failures and bank panics.
In basic terms, non-integrated or homolateral function can be seen when somebody is panicking; emotional functioning is overloading, rational response mechanisms are 'switched off'.
See all examples of panic
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

Collocations withpanic

panic

These are words often used in combination with panic.

Click on a collocation to see more examples of it.

ensuing panic
In 1968 the market was destabilized further by the rumors of an upcoming currency exchange and the ensuing panic.
From
Wikipedia