dizzy
/ˈdɪzi
/adjective (dizzier, dizziest)
1Having or involving a sensation of spinning around and losing one’s balance: Jonathan had begun to suffer dizzy spells figurative he looked around, dizzy with happiness...
- The physician twirled the patient around so fast and long, at one point, that the patient became dizzy and lost her balance.
- In July 1999 he began suffering dizzy spells, resulting in loss of balance, and painful headaches.
- With a dizzy head and uncontrollable balance, she took a couple steps towards the kitchen, but she swayed back and forth.
Synonyms
giddy, light-headed, faint, weak, weak at the knees, unsteady, shaky, wobbly, off-balance;
reeling, staggering, tottering, teetering
informal woozy, with legs like jelly, with rubbery legs
rare vertiginous
dazed, confused, muddled, befuddled, bewildered, disoriented, disorientated, stupefied, groggy
informal woozy, muzzy, dopey, woolly, woolly-headed, not with it, discombobulated
1.1Causing a spinning sensation: a sheer, dizzy drop figurative a dizzy range of hues...
- As Chrissy unpacked her bag, Ian knelt on the pillows and looked down at the dizzy drop to the rocks below.
- South of that lies the corrie of the pap, Coire na Ciche, taking its name the great rock that gazes down into the dizzy depths below.
Synonyms
giddy-making, dizzy-making, causing dizziness, causing giddiness
rare vertiginous
1.2 informal (Of a woman) silly: a dizzy blonde...
- Karen played the dizzy girl who needed help with her bags and needing to be showed to her room.
- But perhaps because I'm dark not blonde, such idiotic statements are thought of as one-offs rather than a sign of a naturally dizzy blonde brain.
- They first met and became friends six years ago when she was playing Corrie's dizzy blonde barmaid Raquel and he was a top executive at Granada studios.
Synonyms
silly, foolish, giddy, light-headed, scatty, scatterbrained, feather-brained, hare-brained, empty-headed, vacuous, stupid, brainless;
skittish, flighty, fickle, capricious, whimsical, inconstant
informal dippy, dopey, batty, dotty, nutty
British informal dappy
North American informal ditzy
verb (dizzies, dizzying, dizzied) [with object] (usually as adjective dizzying)
Make (someone) feel unsteady, confused, or amazed: the dizzying rate of change her nearness dizzied him...
- Dropping the chair with a clatter, Joel made for the door, his vision dizzying him.
- Finally the pain became so bad it dizzied him and he fell to the sand and passed out.
- As I walked in the door, the smell of fresh coffee beans and sweet buns dizzied me.
Phrases
the dizzy heights
Derivatives
dizzily
/ adverb ...- But just as these dizzily warped abstractions threatened to become a redundant signature style, Davie discovered a way to move on.
- The entire experience since they had entered the palace felt surreal, and she wondered dizzily and somewhat vaguely if she was going to faint again.
- I dizzily pull off my boxer shorts, lose balance and crash into the shower door, which graciously opens and grants me entry into the shower.
Origin
Old English dysig 'foolish', of West Germanic origin; related to Low German dusig, dösig 'giddy' and Old High German tusic 'foolish, weak'.
In Old English dizzy meant ‘foolish’. The medieval sense ‘having a whirling feeling in the head’ led to ‘scatterbrained’ and in late 19th-century USA to the dizzy blonde. In the 20th century the US novelist Dashiell Hammett defined the stereotype when he wrote of ‘A dizzy blonde that likes men and fun and hasn't got much sense’. The blonde who had been dizzy from the 1870s became dumb in the 1930s.