startle

His lyrics also startle the way poems do.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 26, 2025

But when she sees another dog, everything changes: she snarls, barks loud enough to startle a city block, and lunges with so much force it takes all my strength to hold her back.

From Salon ● Aug. 18, 2025

The next thing Ms Lees knew, the kangaroo had launched towards her car, which she had slowed to a crawl so as not to startle the animal, and started to attack it.

From BBC ● May 23, 2025

The researchers wondered, then, whether the toe taps were a form of vibrational signaling where the frogs used it as a way to startle or distract the prey before they fed.

From Science Daily ● May 28, 2024

As quietly as possible, so as not to startle it, we rise, crowd around Janine, squeezing her, patting her.

From "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood

I am not sure what startles more—that the feat was achieved at all or that it was Mr. Koolhaas’s firm that pulled it off.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 20, 2026

“They’re a bit of a nuisance, especially if one takes off from a bush next to people and startles them,” Knight said.

From Seattle Times ● May 3, 2024

Whether seeing the fear in combatants and civilians alike or observing how societal ills followed young servicemembers to the front, Lagoze startles in his prose just as he did in his 2019 documentary, “Combat Obscura.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 31, 2023

Her very English outrage startles him from his role as an Israeli Defense Forces soldier “defending my people” and into that of a teenager defending himself against accusations of being from Manchester.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 4, 2023

Teeth startles and then passes out, emitting his terrible stink.

From "Wayward Creatures" by Dayna Lorentz

Likewise, viewers will not be startled when Marina eventually discovers painful secrets about her mom and dad that cause her to reconsider those phantom figures.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 1, 2026

A man was startled to find a black bear in the front seat of a pickup truck in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

From BBC ● Jul. 1, 2026

The initial announcement of SpaceX’s bond sale had startled some investors, some of whom sold their shares.

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 23, 2026

A 2012 self-portrait shows a startled, wan Mr. Hockney unhappily staring at the viewer as if we’ve just interrupted a rare moment of peace; it’s a radical departure from his usually cheery depictions of himself.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026

But, like all Hararis, she had too much experience with ghosts to be easily startled.

From "Night Owls" by A.R. Vishny

The startling revelations that have emerged since September, when the Madlanga Commission began, have left people wondering how such things were allowed to happen.

From BBC ● Jul. 14, 2026

But such mining of meaning out of the mundane is put into startling perspective by something like the death of a child.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 9, 2026

The practical effect, according to Fred Vogler, who has been the Bowl’s principal sound designer since 2003, is startling.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 6, 2026

The superior returns of what Hartnett calls the “red, white and boom,” compared with Britain, is all the more startling considering that nearly all of that came in the past century and a half.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 3, 2026

But the pictures she did keep, and sold, were startling.

From "Little Fires Everywhere" by Celeste Ng