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

“Irian did say it would startle you up and annoy you down, but he insisteds.”

From "Impossible Creatures" by Katherine Rundell

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

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

The zoo called him “a very shy bird that startles easily” and urged anyone who finds him to call its hotline.

From New York Times ● Mar. 28, 2023

“Oh,” I say as a small dog with a squished-up nose startles awake, her tail coiling like a spring.

From "The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman" by Gennifer Choldenko

A Fresno County sheriff’s deputy is mourning the loss of his K-9 partner who was struck by a car after he ran off when he was startled by a fireworks explosion this weekend.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 6, 2026

Observers were startled that, given the risks, Ali Khamenei was present in the very centre of Tehran on February 28 rather than in hiding elsewhere in the vast country.

From Barron's ● 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

Fabio Capello, the Juventus manager, was so startled by the 18-year-old that he reportedly tried to sign him.

From BBC ● Jun. 7, 2026

Camilla was so startled, she forgot to be seasick.

From "Secrets at Sea" by Richard Peck

They lie in mud, shells, ice and rock - fragments of evidence from a time when the Atlantic appears to have changed with startling speed.

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 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

“She understood the ongoing national effort to disremember — this startling combination of dismembering and remembering — to protect the innocence of America,” Glaude says.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 2, 2026

There may be more demanding and exciting summits to reach along the Appalachian Trail than Mount Washington but none can be more startling.

From "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson