cry havoc
verbEtymology From Middle English, from the Anglo-Norman phrase crier havok (“cry havoc”) (a signal to soldiers to seize plunder), from Old French crier (“cry out, shout”) + havot (“pillaging, looting”).
1
Obsolete To shout out 'Havoc!'; that is, to give an army the order to plunder.
- Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals):
- Do not cry havoc, where you should but huntc. 1608–1609 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Coriolanus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals):
1 more example
- War and mortality cry havoc, yet the center holds. That center is the affirmation that actions of body and heroic spirit are in themselves a thing of beauty, that renown shall outweigh the passing terrors of death, and that no catastrophe, not even the fall of Troy, is final.1961 Aug, George Steiner, “Homer and the Scholars”, in The Atlantic Monthly, page 77: