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Startle vs Spookish - What's the difference?

startle | spookish |

As a verb startle

is (label) to move suddenly, or be excited, on feeling alarm; to start.

As a noun startle

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

As an adjective spookish is

(informal) frightening or unnerving in the manner of something eerie or supernatural; spooky.

startle

English

Verb

(startl)
  • (label) To move suddenly, or be excited, on feeling alarm; to start.
  • * (Joseph Addison) (1672-1719)
    • Why shrinks the soul / Back on herself, and startles at destruction?
  • (label) To excite by sudden alarm, surprise, or apprehension; to frighten suddenly and not seriously; to alarm; to surprise.
  • * (John Locke) (1632-1705)
    • The supposition, at least, that angels do sometimes assume bodies need not startle us.
  • * 1896 , (Joseph Conrad), "(An Outcast of the Islands)"
    • Nothing could startle her, make her scold or make her cry. She did not complain, she did not rebel.
  • * , 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.
    • (Clarendon)
  • *{{quote-book, year=1922, author=(Michael Arlen), title= “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days, chapter=Ep./4/2
    • , 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.}}

    Synonyms

    * (to move suddenly) start * (to excite suddenly) alarm, frighten, scare, surprise * (deter) deter

    Derived terms

    * (l)

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • 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.}}

    Derived terms

    * (l) * (l)

    See also

    * (l)

    Anagrams

    *

    spookish

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • (informal) Frightening or unnerving in the manner of something eerie or supernatural; spooky.
  • * 1914 , , Dave Porter in the Gold Fields , ch. 22:
    • I hope we find some nicer spot than this. This looks so lonely and spookish .
  • * 1930 , , Treatise on the Gods (2006 edition), ISBN 9780801885365, pp. 174-5:
    • Religion is everywhere a gauge of respectability. . . . The right to participate, however humbly, in His august and transcendental operations offers a powerful satisfaction to the will to power; the same privilege, on a smaller scale, is what takes hordes of human blanks into the Freemasons and other such spookish amalgamations of nonentities.
  • (informal, often of a horse or other animal) Easily startled, frightened, or unnerved.
  • * 1908 , Sylvester Barbour, Reminiscences (2009 edition), ISBN 9781115996655, p. 26:
    • In those moments thus spent in composing myself for sleep, I sometimes wondered in the last human occupant of the room were not a dead one. I was senselessly spookish about such things.
  • * 2010 , " Sarah $3000", isoldmyhorse.com (retrieved 13 July 2010):
    • As a lesson horse she needs to gain confidence in her rider, or can become spookish over the jumps, dodging out of them.

    Synonyms

    * (easily startled or frightened) skittish

    References

    *Oxford English Dictionary , 2nd ed., 1989.