giddy. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.

The American Heritage^® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.

giddy

SYLLABICATION:	gid·dy
PRONUNCIATION:	gd
ADJECTIVE:	Inflected forms: gid·di·er, gid·di·est 1a. Having a reeling, lightheaded sensation; dizzy. b. Causing or capable of causing dizziness: a giddy climb to the topmast. 2. Frivolous and lighthearted; flighty.
INTRANSITIVE & TRANSITIVE VERB:	Inflected forms: gid·died, gid·dy·ing, gid·dies To become or make giddy.
ETYMOLOGY:	Middle English gidi, crazy, from Old English gidig. See gheu()- in Appendix I.
OTHER FORMS:	giddi·ly —ADVERB giddi·ness —NOUN
SYNONYMS:	giddy, dizzy, vertiginous These adjectives mean producing a sensation of whirling and a tendency to fall: a giddy precipice; a dizzy pinnacle; a vertiginous height.
WORD HISTORY:	The word giddy refers to fairly lightweight experiences or situations, but at one time it had to do with profundities. Giddy can be traced back to the same Germanic root gud– that has given us the word God.* The Germanic word gudigaz formed on this root meant “possessed by a god.” Such possession can be a rather unbalancing experience, and so it is not surprising that the Old English descendant of gudigaz, gidig, meant “mad, possessed by an evil spirit,” or that the Middle English development of gidig, gidi, meant the same thing, as well as “foolish; mad (used of an animal); dizzy; uncertain, unstable.” Our sense “lighthearted, frivolous” represents the ultimate secularization of giddy.


The American Heritage^® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.