pull sb up short
to surprise someone, often so that that person stops what they are doing:
Seeing her picture in the paper pulled me up short.
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
Surprising and shocking
- a blinding flash idiom
- a bolt from/out of the blue idiom
- amaze
- amazing
- astonish
- bolt
- breath
- dynamite
- earth-shattering
- expectation
- eye-opener
- faze
- revelation
- staggering
- startle
- startling
- sting
- stunning
- stupefy
- thunderbolt
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