to surprise sb suddenly in a way that slightly shocks or frightens them:
[VN] I didn't mean to startle you. * The explosion startled the horse. * I was startled by her question. * [VNtoinf] It startled me to find her sitting in my office.
startled adjective:
She looked at him with startled eyes. * He looked startled. * She jumped back like a startled rabbit.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for startle is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is startle a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, startle is tagged as verb.
Does startle appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — startle appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.