startle

It triggers an automatic "startle response" to any loud noise.

From BBC ● Apr. 9, 2026

Few people who have been on the national stage this long retain an ability to startle.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 24, 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

In the documentary, we see Lopez share Affleck’s love letters with her musicians to inspire them — something that seemed to startle him.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 21, 2024

They sneak around the house and yard, trumpeting near people to startle them.

From "Merci Suárez Changes Gears" by Meg Medina

More than 60 years on, the scene still startles.

From Salon ● Sep. 4, 2026

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

What probably startles beginning bromeliad growers most, even after providing diligent care, is the inevitable decline of the original or mother plant after it flowers.

From Seattle Times ● Nov. 22, 2023

But it’s Lindsey’s James who startles the play out its predictable maneuvers.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 17, 2023

Dad clasps her arm in a movement so swift, it startles me.

From "I Can Make This Promise" by Christine Day

While holding Gnocchi, a large street cleaning truck whipped down the street and startled him into clawing away.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 8, 2026

"The two US deportees looked startled and kept asking which country is this and where it is," said a source.

From Barron's ● Aug. 27, 2026

"I was startled awake and immediately went to my child's room."

From BBC ● Aug. 15, 2026

Mark Chamberlin, the school’s controller between 2021 and 2023, said he was startled by how weak financial management was, with few internal controls, poor record-keeping and few consequences when overspending came to light.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 3, 2026

Gentle or not, the move startled C.C., who pulled away in defense.

From "The Very, Very Far North" by Dan Bar-el

It's likely to be the most significant royal book since Prince Harry's startling 2023 memoir, Spare, and Andrew Lownie's 2025 book Entitled, which doomed Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's reputation.

From BBC ● Sep. 21, 2026

Aerial reporters possess a peculiar intimacy with listeners, their voices and visuals filling cars and houses with their personalities as well as useful, even startling, real-time information.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 16, 2026

That startling conversion is the subject of Dennis C. Rasmussen’s “Frederick Douglass’s American Founding,” an engaging, lucid intellectual history.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 4, 2026

But that is by design, said INRIA's Serena Ivaldi, as the robots "have to act in human environments" without startling the people they help.

From Barron's ● Sep. 3, 2026

Only Katahdin, with its rocky upper slopes and startling muscularity, offers anything that looks faintly intimidating.

From "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson