What is "startling"

Usage examples of "startling".

The eloquent allocutions addressed to the masses which Bonaparte had, as it were, invented, produced effects in those days of patriotism and miracle that were absolutely startling.

These facts of allotropism have some corollaries connected with them rather startling to us of the nineteenth century.

The mamuti, anticipating the need for explanations to relieve the anxieties caused by this startling innovation, had mentally searched the theoretical construct of their metaphysical world for answers that would satisfy.

While these unfinished exclamations were actually passing my lips I chanced to cross that infernal mat, and it is no more startling than true, but at my word a quiver of expectation ran through that gaunt web--a rustle of anticipation filled its ancient fabric, and one frayed corner surged up, and as I passed off its surface in my stride, the sentence still unfinished on my lips, wrapped itself about my left leg with extraordinary swiftness and so effectively that I nearly fell into the arms of my landlady, who opened the door at the moment and came in with a tray and the steak and tomatoes mentioned more than once already.

So that the day he took possession of his apartments, and looked over his bills, he made the startling discovery that this short apprenticeship of Paris had cost him fifty-thousand francs, one-fourth of his fortune.

Usually she was far ahead of him in her shrewd analysis of the astronaut program, and her witty observations on the other men of the Solid Six were startling in their perceptions.

Bland were under discussion, Bland himself was busy with his trousers, which were showing an alarming inclination to make startling revelations.

Suku and Oajaca, or the temples of Xochialco and Boro Buddor, we must at least allow that the likeness is startling, and difficult to account for on the theory of mere accidental coincidence.

Swept along by enthusiasm and her own plans, she gave Robb Brindle a swift, hard hug followed by a startling hot kiss, then rushed off before her grinning friend could react.

Smith read a paper before a learned medical association a few years since in which he pointed out the startling fact that in one thousand cases of consumption five hundred and eighteen had suffered from some form of sexual abuse, and more than four hundred had been addicted to masturbation or suffered from nocturnal emissions.

Tall, sinewy works, these statues in metalline crystals rose many miles into the hot air, filling it with grace and strange, almost startling beauty.

The first, being the most obvious, is a protean diversity enfolding multiferous literary forms and, specific to the fiction, demonstrating startling variations of style, texture, and mood.

Holly smiled back, blonde and serene, her beauty given an extraordinary dimension by those particoloured eyes, one blue, the other a startling violet.

As the air began to rush out of the pleural space through the valve, it made a honking sound, further startling the onlookers.

And startling everyone in the room, Polling leapt forward, grabbed the agent by his green lapels and shoved him against the wall.