startle

Rather than attempting to lure the animals toward the speaker, the researchers played the sounds loudly enough to provoke a startle response.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 30, 2026

“Sudden explosive noise, concussive blasts, and bright flashes have the potential to startle young birds, creating unnecessary risk during a critical period of development.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 24, 2026

Percussion instruments—including a whistle and slap-stick—interrupt and startle.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 24, 2026

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

She watched the bird startle into the air, and something red flashed in her peripheral vision.

From Anya and the Dragon by Sofiya Pasternack

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

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

When something startles the flightless birds, they can be seen sprinting around the edges of their enclosures, flailing their long necks around.

From Seattle Times ● May 5, 2022

I get up from my chair so suddenly, she startles.

From "A Place at the Table" by Saadia Faruqi and Laura Shovan

“I was really startled by it. It just kind of came in this wave, and then it just grew from there.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 17, 2026

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

She said some birds do not die instantly when shot and instead get startled in the dark and collide with things, but Pellen said that was "not true at all".

From BBC ● Jul. 24, 2026

I forgot to watch the chickens for a minute, I was so startled.

From "Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer" by Kelly Jones

Given that a robot recently beat Usain Bolt's 100m sprint record, it's not the most startling achievement.

From BBC ● Sep. 17, 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

The chain told customers that the affected Taylor Farms lettuce had been removed and invited them, with almost startling confidence, to come back.

From Salon ● Sep. 13, 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

They entered the church by the sanctuary door, startling the sacristan who slept and ate in a small room off the entrance porch.

From "The Door in the Wall" by Marguerite de Angeli