The word attention derives from a warning against danger.

Evidence

From the start of this work, an important dimension of attention has been almost completely overlooked – the very one that is expressed by the substantive when it becomes an exclamation: Attention! A bar-room ethology may see in this use of the word the vestige of its most elementary signification. Maybe, we were originally only attentive to a phenomenon because we thought we had something to fear. Caute!, Cuidado!, Achtung!, Watch Out!, Sta attento!, Fais attention!, such would be the first recommendations of a good sense, a prudence and an intelligence whose goal was maximizing our persistence in being by helping us to avoid for as long as possible the potential causes of our destruction. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 320

Categorization

• DEFINE: Etymology of attention as exclamation — ‘Fais attention!’ — rooting collective attention in fear and prudence.
• CANDY: The playful list ‘Caute!, Cuidado!, Achtung!, Watch Out!’ across five languages makes this an easy conversational nugget.