call attention to

call attention to (someone or something)

To draw others' awareness to someone or something. I know you were trying to sneak into the meeting, but you really called attention to yourself when you knocked over that chair. That garish new paint color really calls attention to all the imperfections in the walls.
See also: attention, call
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

call someone's attention to something

 and call something to someone's attention
to bring something to someone's notice; to make someone recognize some fact. May I call your attention to the sign on the door? He called to our attention the notice on the wall.
See also: attention, call

call attention to someone or something

to cause someone, including oneself, or something to be noticed or observed. I think he dresses like that simply to call attention to himself.
See also: attention, call
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.
See also:
  • call attention to (someone or something)
  • call (someone or something) to (one's) attention
  • (you've) got to get up pretty early in the morning to (do something)
  • gotta get up pretty early in the morning to
  • sneak up
  • sneak up (on someone or something)
  • sneak up on
  • intoxicate
  • intoxicate (someone) with (something)
  • intoxicate with
References in periodicals archive
Her mission is dearly to call attention to the erasure of Canada Lee and make his forgotten story memorable once more.
Mona Z. Smith. Becoming Something: The Story of Canada Lee
The event--with the theme "Public Works: The Heart of Every Community"--is designed to raise awareness of public works issues and call attention to the efforts of the thousands of people who provide and maintain the nation's infrastructure and services.
Seven-day public works salute
To find out how you and your school can call attention to this important issue, go to www.afterschoolalliance.org.
Keep the light on
We generally led discrete lives not wanting to call attention to ourselves.
Dena Rosenfeld. The Changing of the Guard: Lesbian and Gay Elders, Identity and Social Change
"I just hope to call attention to how skewed the summer daylight hours are relative to the average Japanese citizen's schedule--and compared to the rest of the world," says King.
Daylight savings in Japan?
In my own experience, what protects incompetence in the bureaucracy is the spirit of collegiality that encourages government officials not to blow the whistle on the other guy's ineptitude lest he call attention to theirs.
Farming turkeys
Appearing as illustrations in Myth, Memory, and the Making of the American Landscape, these images call attention to the problem which the authors of this essay collection ably illuminate.
Myth, Memory, and the Making of the American Landscape
With a concentration and patience that imposed an extremely slow rhythm of production on him--the ten years that separated the two exhibitions must seem a reasonable lapse of time to van Golden--he has striven to call attention to visual events.
Daan van Golden: Galerie Micheline Szwajcer
"Tom's run across the state was one of the best ways I can think of to call attention to the benefits of homegrown, renewable E85 fuel."
Tom Andrews makes a Run for Clean Air
I invoke this experience not to call attention to my academic achievements, but as a concrete--and not so unique--example of both the promise of affirmative action and the fallacy of defining merit or qualifications exclusively or principally in terms of performance on standardized tests.
Equality control: a Catholic perspective on affirmative action in the wake of the recent Supreme Court decisions
DeVille failed to call attention to the need for better education.
From Fr. Cyril Robitaille. (Letters to the Editor)
The employee had been involved in a "peaceful protest" designed to call attention to jail employees' working conditions such as low wages and staff shortages.
Cooper v. Sedgwick County, Kansas
One such "Journal Focus" question might be to call attention to a modernistic work of art in their textbooks and ask them to support why they feel the piece should or should not be considered art.
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: implications for the classroom teacher
The author's debut titles call attention to countless children who deal with name-calling and peer pressure every day.
Handsome Me
However, it did little to call attention to the appointment of Defense Department attorney David M.
UN prosecutor appointed. (Insider Report)