What's the difference between skittish and startle?

Skittish


Definition:

  • (v. t.) Easily frightened; timorous; shy; untrustworthy; as, a skittish colt.
  • (v. t.) Wanton; restive; freakish; volatile; changeable; fickle.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Jason Conibear, market analyst at forex specialists, Cambridge Mercantile, argues that Obama will be breathing a sigh of relief, even though US economic growth is slowing: American consumers are getting skittish again, but with the giant economy's output still creeping upwards, politicians and policymakers will find the perfect excuse to do nothing.
  • (2) Bosnia were dreadfully vulnerable on their left with Lulic often drawn forwards, a situation not helped by the uncharacteristic skittishness of Emir Spahic, the left-sided centre-back, who misplaced a couple of passes in the opening 10 minutes and looked anxious throughout.
  • (3) Obama, who had been skittish about coming to Copenhagen at all unless it could be cast as a foreign policy success, looked visibly frustrated as he appeared before world leaders.
  • (4) As Shallow, he “pecks at the lines, nibbles at them like a parrot biting on a nut; for all his age, he darts here and there nimbly enough, even skittishly: forgetting nothing, not even the pleasure of Falstaff’s page, that ‘little tiny thief’.” But if Tynan was enamoured of Olivier, he was also alert to the miniaturist precision of Alec Guinness.
  • (5) The first episodes show a woman stumbling between responses: refusing punishing treatment that might prolong her life slightly; cartwheeling down corridors; deciding not to tell her family about the diagnosis; flashing her doctor; keeping her juvenile husband at arm's length; and trying desperately, skittishly, to fix her teenage son's brattish behaviour before it's too late.
  • (6) Cameron Peacock, market analyst at IG Markets, said the financial markets were in "skittish" mood.
  • (7) Assuming, as still seems likely, that it passes, the odds that the White House will get legislators – who'll already be skittish about how changes to the healthcare system might impact on their re-election chances – to swallow another big pill like that are slim indeed.
  • (8) For now, it seems the selling is confined to the more skittish market participants, but if the index moves much lower the quiet retreat could turn into an increasingly panicky rout.
  • (9) Factory's Happy Mondays bound together the exotic new dance rhythms with a groggy Lancastrian verse, and in the movement known as Madchester was born the commercialisation of the abstract, agitating spirit of Factory, and the spirited postmodern skittishness of Wilson.
  • (10) If they do not assert that clear control, these technology companies risk losing business – not only from skittish consumers, but also from corporate and foreign-government clients.
  • (11) He learnt the new motions, the vastly swaying skittishness and violence of the revenant rigs.
  • (12) Matip’s aerial prowess should help improve Liverpool’s ability to defend set-pieces and he is a sound tackler and tidy builder from the back, but what his team need most in the absence of further defensive recruits is an organiser who can somehow instil concentration and calmness into chronically skittish team-mates.
  • (13) Skittish, exasperating and endearing, yes, but never dull.
  • (14) Putting in some time behind the till of my family’s shop before Christmas reminded me that the customer is a skittish beast.
  • (15) I’m not surprised that some [backbenchers] are skittish, because there’s all this stuff in the ether and they don’t have a broad-based package to look at.” Turnbull appeared to step back from the GST proposal during the week, answering questions from Labor on the revenue measure during question time by saying no plans had been finalised.
  • (16) Speaking at a meeting of the Business Roundtable in Washington, Obama warned Republicans against “playing chicken with an $18tn economy” by threatening a shutdown, especially in “skittish” stock market conditions.
  • (17) His comments are likely to add to the volatility of already skittish markets.
  • (18) I had been warned that she had been skittish about agreeing to do media interviews, that she was concerned certain boundaries should not be crossed - which put me doubly on my guard.
  • (19) Zuckerberg himself made clear that he wasn’t going to loosen his reigns on Facebook, reassuring skittish shareholders that he would continue to serve as the company’s CEO “for many, many years to come”.
  • (20) Gliding was inhibited on very hydrophobic substrata and skittish on very hydrophilic surfaces.

Startle


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To move suddenly, or be excited, on feeling alarm; to start.
  • (v. t.) To excite by sudden alarm, surprise, or apprehension; to frighten suddenly and not seriously; to alarm; to surprise.
  • (v. t.) To deter; to cause to deviate.
  • (n.) A sudden motion or shock caused by an unexpected alarm, surprise, or apprehension of danger.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) These later results suggest that dopamine agonists increase sensorimotor reactivity measured with acoustic startle by acting on sensory rather than motor parts of the reflex arc.
  • (2) The hypothesis that the standard acoustic startle habituation paradigm contains the elements of Pavlovian fear conditioning was tested.
  • (3) But that promise was beginning to startle the markets, which admire Monti’s appetite for austerity and fear the free spending and anti-European views of some Italian politicians.
  • (4) Both startle amplitude and onset latency showed significantly greater facilitation in the preschool children than in the 8-year-olds and adults.
  • (5) flexion, stretch, rolling, startle, jumping (stepping), and writhing.
  • (6) Three response patterns were scored: (1) no startle, (2) startle without response decrement, and (3) response decrement by 12 stimuli.
  • (7) More importantly, motor and cardiovascular responses to startle may be separated through discrimination of afferent stimuli suggesting either differences in neural pathways for acoustic and tactile stimuli or a differential dependency of the various responses on stimulus characteristics.
  • (8) The startle-elicited increase in blood pressure was significantly elevated in SHRs and at the same time the acoustic startle response was depressed as compared to WKY rats.
  • (9) A placebo effect could not definitely be ruled out, but the startling changes seen in patients who had been followed for years with other forms of therapy suggest strongly that this improvement was genuine.
  • (10) In general, conditions that affect the amplitude of the acoustic startle reflex similarly influence the disruptive effect of a noise burst on motor performance, but the two measures are not correlated in the detail necessary to suggest a causative relationship.
  • (11) The results are compared to other drugs known to affect the startle reflex.
  • (12) In awake rats the latency of auditory startle recorded electromyographically in the neck is about 5 ms, suggesting that the primary component of this brainstem reflex is mediated by a neural circuit with only a few synapses.
  • (13) A series of seven experiments related amplitude and latency of the pigeon's startle response, elicited by an intense visual stimulus, to antecedent auditory and visual events in the sensory environment.
  • (14) The acoustic startle response (ASR) of male rats was measured during several sessions over a 24-hr period in both a light-dark cycle and a constant-dark condition.
  • (15) That dramatically shifts the focus back to us, the programme makers, to come up with more, new, startling ideas, absolutely unmissable storylines and settings, the sharpest writing.
  • (16) Because ammocoetes are burrowing filter feeders, this startle behavior results in rapid withdrawal of the head into the burrow.
  • (17) Startle was indexed by the eyeblink, which was measured by vertical electro-oculography.
  • (18) In the present work no significant differences were found between the behaviour of FG7142-kindled rats and vehicle-treated controls in social interaction test, elevated plus maze, or the Vogel conflict test of anxiety or in tests of home cage aggression or startle responses.
  • (19) The first attempted to determine a sonic boom level below which startle would not occurr.
  • (20) It is able to (1) sample startle responses from 5 animals simultaneously during a specific time band after the eliciting stimulus; (2) convert the analogue startle amplitudes into 2-digit numbers; (3) print the digital results of each startle in each animal; (4) add up the startle amplitudes for each rat over a preset number of stimuli and print the totals; (5) print the interstimulus interval and (6) code for up to six diferent types of trials.