giddy
Americanadjective
-
giddier,
comparative
-
giddiest
superlative
-
affected with vertigo; dizzy.
- Synonyms:
- vertiginous, lightheaded
-
attended with or causing dizziness.
a giddy climb.
-
frivolous and lighthearted; flighty.
a giddy young person.
- Synonyms:
- vacillating, inconstant, fickle, mercurial, volatile, unstable
verb (used with or without object)
-
giddies,
present (3rd person singular)
-
giddied,
past participle, past
-
giddying
present participle
adjective
-
affected with a reeling sensation and feeling as if about to fall; dizzy
-
causing or tending to cause vertigo
-
impulsive; scatterbrained
-
an exclamation of surprise
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
giddysimple
-
giddiessimple
-
have giddiedperfect
-
has giddiedperfect
-
am giddyingprogressive
-
are giddyingprogressive
-
is giddyingprogressive
-
have been giddyingperfect progressive
-
has been giddyingperfect progressive
Past
-
giddiedsimple
-
had giddiedperfect
-
was giddyingprogressive
-
were giddyingprogressive
-
had been giddyingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of giddy
First recorded before 1000; Middle English gidy, Old English gidig “mad,” variant of gydig (unrecorded), derivative of god God, presumably originally “possessed by a divine being”
Explanation
If you've ever spun in circles until you fell to the ground laughing, you know how it feels to be giddy. This adjective can mean dizzy, elated, or — as in the spinning around example — a lightheaded, lighthearted combination of the two. The hackneyed phrase "giddy as a schoolgirl" calls forth the image of a kid giggling with her friends over some adolescent foolishness. Giddy has been used to describe someone incapable of serious thought or easily excited as far back as the 16th century. Given that, in modern usage, giddy describes someone silly and frivolous, it's interesting to know that the Old English source for this word has a slightly darker tinge: gidig means "insane" or "god-possessed."
Vocabulary lists containing giddy
Grade 9, List 6
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Inside Out & Back Again
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Vocabulary from "Community is the 'killer app' missing from virtual reality" by Dmitri Williams
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
It’s about inertia and abdication, not solutions, and while I don’t entirely love this strange comedy, I’m giddy that it’s lurched into existence.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 29, 2026
Was he really sure that the then-Prince Charles had sounded "giddy" after his former wife had died on that terrible night in 1997?
From BBC ● Sep. 20, 2026
And Arsenal began its championship defense on Friday night with a 3-0 victory over Coventry City, which prompted giddy speculation that Arsenal might actually be fun to watch this season.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 22, 2026
The signs are all around that Wall Street is back in that dangerous atmosphere of giddy euphoria that those with long memories will remember from the infamous dot-com bubble of the late 1990s.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 12, 2026
Muhammad’s the one getting giddy with the wedding prep, while she stays silent.
From "Saints and Misfits" by S.K. Ali
Yet the truth this winter is far giddier, fuller, louder.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 18, 2020
And that has to make TV executives and the league’s billionaire owners even giddier than they usually are at this time of year.
From Washington Times ● Dec. 27, 2016
Alas, making fun and profit of the George Lucas saga is a tactic about 30 years behind the curve; Mel Brooks did it, with giddier panache, in the 1987 Spaceballs.
From Time ● Aug. 1, 2014
He’s giddier than an 8-year-old to have a 700-pound soft-serve machine taking up half his pantry at The Hollywood Tavern in Woodinville.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 30, 2014
But it sometimes makes you giddier than galoping.
From The King of Schnorrers Grotesques and Fantasies by Israel Zangwill
They made the last eight and are three matches from the giddiest glory.
From BBC ● Sep. 6, 2025
It’s the giddiest, most thrilling, most fabulous show in town.
From New York Times ● Jan. 29, 2023
Based on a 1962 trading card series, Mars Attacks! is Tim Burton at his absolute giddiest.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 8, 2019
The offseason mood among the players was probably best captured by Upton who, upon the signing of Ohtani, tweeted "So pumped right now" accompanied by a GIF showing the giddiest Mike Tyson ever.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 25, 2018
Most deeply affecting was it to see among the serious and exemplary communicants of this church some who during my residence in that place were among the giddiest youth of the village.
From Gleanings by the Way by John A. Clark
And now he remained stock-still, thinking that he had really tired his father out, for they had ridden like mad that morning, intoxicated with the smooth length of the roads, giddied with excessive speed.
From Small Souls by Louis Couperus
The tone was correctly contrite, but Susan felt underneath the confidence that he would be forgiven—the confidence of the egotist giddied by a triumph.
From Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise by David Graham Phillips
Thus, so suddenly that it giddied me, I was translated from failure to success, from poverty to affluence, from the most harassing anxiety to ease and security.
From The Plum Tree by E. M. Ashe
By inverting the perspective, Mr. Daoud shifts the focus from the absurdity of Meursault’s act in the giddying sunlight to the blindness of the colonial mind-set.
From New York Times ● Oct. 6, 2022
The reversal of fortunes for the island nation’s most powerful politician for decades has been giddying.
From Reuters ● May 12, 2022
Nobody who saw “Something Wild,” in 1986, can ever forget the giddying swerve of the plot.
From The New Yorker ● Apr. 29, 2017
And Seth MacFarlane’s R-rated comedy “A Million Ways to Die in the West” placed No. 5, giddying up to $7.2 million.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 8, 2014
Geologists, as McPhee has noted, found themselves in the giddying position that "the whole earth suddenly made sense."
From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
