Startled

How to spell startled

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce startled

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does startled mean?

1. adjectiveSuddenly surprised, alarmed, or made to flinch by something unexpected.
2. verbPast tense of startle: caused someone or something to feel sudden surprise or fright.

Startled in a sentence

• adjective

  The startled commuter dropped her coffee when the alarm went off.

• verb

  The loud knock at midnight startled everyone in the house.

• adjective

  A startled deer froze in the headlights of the car.

• verb

  Her sudden appearance startled the cat off the windowsill.

Where does startled come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word descends from the Old English verb steartlian, meaning 'to kick out, to struggle, to move suddenly', which was a frequentative form built on the same root that gives us the modern verb 'start' in its older sense of a sudden involuntary movement. For centuries 'start' itself could mean to jump or flinch in alarm, and 'startle' carried the repeated or intensified version of that idea: to make something jump or flinch. By the 1500s the meaning had settled into the modern sense of causing or experiencing a sudden shock of surprise or fright. The native Germanic origin explains the plain spelling; the only mild trap is the unstressed -le ending of 'startle', which keeps its 'l' before the regular -ed suffix to give 'startled'. The shared ancestry with everyday 'start' is a handy reminder that the word is built from start, not from any exotic root.

How the word is built

• startle (from Old English steartlian: to kick, struggle, move suddenly)
• -ed (past tense / past participle suffix)