Dictionary

startlement en · NOUN

Etymology

Etymology tree English startle Proto-Indo-European *-mn̥ Proto-Indo-European *-mn̥tom Proto-Italic *-mentom Latin -mentum Old French -mentbor. Middle English -ment English -ment English startlement From startle + -ment.

Meanings

1. An instance of being startled; surprise.
   • I discern three interrelated levels at which startlement is experienced in Hitchcock. First, startlement may take the form of an actual event in the world. The extinguisher's rattle, for instance, is said by the truck driver to “get to you”; and, about the tap-tapping in Marnie, the heroine says that “it means they want in.” 2016, D. A. Miller, Hidden Hitchcock, page 182:
   • Whether by means large or small, noticed or almost imperceptible, poetry's startlements displace the existing self with a changed one. 2015, Jane Hirshfield, Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World:
   • There is no pursing up and general startlement—the thing of all others I dread. 1889, Constance Macewen, A Cavalier's Ladye: A Romance of the Isle of Wight in the Seventeenth Century, page 338:

Forms