Startlish

adj, slang

adj, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Easily startled; skittish. colloquial

    "He stirred up in a kind of a startlish way; but when he see it was only me he took a good gap and stretch, and then he says: “Hello, what's up? Don't cry, bub. What's the trouble?”"

Example

More examples

"He stirred up in a kind of a startlish way; but when he see it was only me he took a good gap and stretch, and then he says: “Hello, what's up? Don't cry, bub. What's the trouble?”"

Etymology

From startle + -ish.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.