startling
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of startling
Explanation
Something that's startling is so unexpected that it shocks or surprises you. It would be startling to open your front door and see a clown standing there. Startling events or circumstances aren't necessarily frightening, though they can be. A surprise party, if it's planned right, is startling, and it can be startling the first time you meet your best friend's identical twin sister. Alarm clocks, smoke alarms, and barking dogs can all be equally startling. They startle you — and startle comes from start, with its Old English root styrtan, "to leap up."
Vocabulary lists containing startling
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The disconnect between soaring tech stocks External link and the rest of the market is startling.
From Barron's • May 5, 2026
Sunday’s performance of “Falstaff” was followed by a talk between Conlon and British actor, writer and startling wit, Stephen Fry.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 29, 2026
“Mother Mary” is as hair-raising as it is eyebrow-raising, all spectral senselessness until, out of nowhere, the eeriness gives way to a startling profundity as the film explores remorse with biblical repercussions.
From Salon • Apr. 24, 2026
A convoy of white and black turbaned mullahs in camouflage, guns strapped across their chests, growls past in a parade of motorcycles - another startling moment of this night.
From BBC • Apr. 23, 2026
Often you will be plodding through the sanctuary of woods when suddenly a car will sail past through the trees only forty or fifty feet away—a perennially startling sight.
From "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
