startle

They then measured how the mice responded using a modified auditory startle test.

From Science Daily ● May 15, 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

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 first reaction is to startle, the second to bolt.

From "Watership Down: A Novel" by Richard Adams

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

When finally you see it, however, the pose chosen for the portrait startles.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 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

She startles, as if this is a quiet room and I am a sudden noise.

From "Every Day" by David Levithan

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

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

From BBC ● Aug. 15, 2026

But instead of Samba, a startled muntjac—a small deer—darted out of the undergrowth.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 14, 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

I had heard it used in school about mad animals, but it startled me, too.

From "Black Star, Bright Dawn" by Scott O'Dell

This past week, the German government made an announcement that was both startling and unsurprising.

From Salon ● Sep. 7, 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

After Saturday’s loss in Detroit, it had been a startling nine games since Ohtani homered or collected an RBI.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 30, 2026

It was a new and startling thing to me for ordinary friendship to be as off-limits as romance could be.

From "Flying Through Water" by Mamle Wolo