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say it: STAHR-tuhld
startled is an adjective meaning "excited by sudden surprise or alarm and making a quick involuntary movement". It is pronounced /ˈstɑɹtəld/ — STAHR-tuhld. It carries one recorded sense.
excited by sudden surprise or alarm and making a quick involuntary movement
“students startled by the teacher's quiet return”
“the sudden fluttering of the startled pigeons”
“her startled expression”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for startled come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.