startlement

startlement

English

Etymology

startle +‎ -ment

Noun

startlement (plural startlements)

1. An instance of being startled; surprise.
   • 1889, Constance Macewen, A Cavalier's Ladye: A Romance of the Isle of Wight in the Seventeenth Century, page 338:

     There is no pursing up and general startlement—the thing of all others I dread.

   • 2015, Jane Hirshfield, Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World:

     Whether by means large or small, noticed or almost imperceptible, poetry's startlements displace the existing self with a changed one.

   • 2016, D. A. Miller, Hidden Hitchcock, page 182:

     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.”