Dazzle vs Startle - What's the difference?
dazzle | startle | Related terms |
To confuse the sight of by means of excessive brightness.
* Milton
* Sir H. Taylor
(figuratively) To render incapable of thinking clearly; to overwhelm with showiness or brilliance.
To be overpowered by light; to be confused by excess of brightness.
* Francis Bacon
* Dryden
A light of dazzling brilliancy.
(uncommon) A herd of zebra.
* 1958', Laurens Van der Post, ''The lost world of the Kalahari: with the great and the little memory'' (' 1998 David Coulson edition):
* 2009 , Darren Paul Shearer, In You God Trusts , page 176:
* 2010 , Douglas Rogers, The Last Resort: A Memoir of Mischief and Mayhem on a Family Farm in Africa , page 22:
(label) To move suddenly, or be excited, on feeling alarm; to start.
* (Joseph Addison) (1672-1719)
(label) To excite by sudden alarm, surprise, or apprehension; to frighten suddenly and not seriously; to alarm; to surprise.
* (John Locke) (1632-1705)
* 1896 , (Joseph Conrad), "(An Outcast of the Islands)"
* , title=Say Cheese and Die, Again!
, passage=The high voice in the night air startled me. Without thinking, I started to run. Then stopped. I spun around, my heart heaving against my chest. And saw a boy. About my age.}}
To deter; to cause to deviate.
*{{quote-book, year=1922, author=(Michael Arlen), title=
, passage=As they turned into Hertford Street they startled a robin from the poet's head on a barren fountain, and he fled away with a cameo note.}}
A sudden motion or shock caused by an unexpected alarm, surprise, or apprehension of danger.
* {{quote-book
, year=1845
, author=George Hooker Colton, James Davenport Whelpley
, title=The American review
, chapter=1
, passage=The figure of a man heaving in sight amidst these wide solitudes, always causes a startle and thrill of expectation and doubt, similar to the feeling produced by the announcement of " a strange sail ahead" on shipboard, during a long voyage.}}
Dazzle is a related term of startle.
As verbs the difference between dazzle and startle
is that dazzle is to confuse the sight of by means of excessive brightness while startle is (label) to move suddenly, or be excited, on feeling alarm; to start.As nouns the difference between dazzle and startle
is that dazzle is a light of dazzling brilliancy while startle is a sudden motion or shock caused by an unexpected alarm, surprise, or apprehension of danger.dazzle
English
Verb
(dazzl)- Dazzled by the headlights of the lorry, the deer stopped in the middle of the street.
- Those heavenly shapes / Will dazzle now the earthly, with their blaze / Insufferably bright.
- An unreflected light did never yet / Dazzle the vision feminine.
- The delegates were dazzled by the originality of his arguments.
- An overlight maketh the eyes dazzle .
- I dare not trust these eyes; / They dance in mists, and dazzle with surprise.
Derived terms
* dazzler * dazzlementNoun
(s)- We were trying to stalk a dazzle of zebra which flashed in and out of a long strip of green and yellow fever trees, with an ostrich, its feathers flared like a ballet skirt around its dancing legs, on their flank, when suddenly
- Zebras move in herds which are known as "dazzles." When a lion approaches a dazzle of zebras during its hunt,
- I reached the lodge as a dazzle of zebras trotted across the dirt road into thorny scrub by the game fence, and a lone kudu gazed up at me from the short grass near the swimming pool.
Synonyms
* herdstartle
English
Verb
(startl)- Why shrinks the soul / Back on herself, and startles at destruction?
- The supposition, at least, that angels do sometimes assume bodies need not startle us.
- Nothing could startle her, make her scold or make her cry. She did not complain, she did not rebel.
- (Clarendon)
“Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days, chapter=Ep./4/2