startle

IPA: stˈɑrtʌɫ

A sudden motion or shock caused by an unexpected alarm, surprise, or apprehension of danger.

(intransitive) To move suddenly, or be excited, on feeling alarm; to start.
(transitive) To excite by sudden alarm, surprise, or apprehension; to frighten suddenly and not seriously; to alarm; to surprise.
(transitive, obsolete) To deter; to cause to deviate.

Examples of "startle" in Sentences

Drug deaths startle officials.
Sonic booms startle area residents.
It intrigued me, but did not startle me.
He is startled by a weird looking creature.
He is startled by the creature and is killed by it.
The closeness of the race startled the nation at the time.
However, the knight is startled by the phone and destroys it.
Kim Kardashian: we am in startle that [Brittany] Murphy has died!
September 30th, 2009 Oregon dad gets trial in startle neck cuff caseSALEM, Ore.
This is called the startle reflex; it's an automatic response to fear or danger, and it's very hard to fake.
The simple reaction that "he must be wrong" because his findings surprise or even startle is simple establishment bias.
Occasionally he flung his arms up in what is known as the startle reflex, as if the shock of being in open air was too much for him and he feared falling through space.
In this study, U.S. researchers subjected normal-hearing mice and mice with induced tinnitus to a sudden loud sound, called a startle test, and measured their response to an unexpected gap in the noise frequency.