clear and present danger

1. 1.

   a standard for judging when freedom of speech can be abridged

   “no one has a right to shout `fire' in a crowded theater when there is no fire because such an action would pose a clear and present danger to public safety”

   Broaderdanger

Questions about clear and present danger

What does clear and present danger mean?

clear and present danger means "a standard for judging when freedom of speech can be abridged".

Is clear and present danger a common word?

clear and present danger is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.