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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100 SAT Words Beginning with "G"
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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:
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
"I still get giddy thinking about it , especially since I grew up in California next to Modesto where George Lucas was from," the 41-year-old said.
From BBC ● Jul. 4, 2026
Ureña, a 22-year-old right-hander who has emerged as another potential ace, speaks of Soriano with a giddy amusement mixed with a solemn respect for how the starter has survived in the big leagues.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 30, 2026
Arthur’s season-ending announcement that the months they’ve spent together only mark the start of his project might make you a little giddy to see how far and high this partnership will soar.
From Salon ● Jun. 20, 2026
For a brief few giddy years, I was the one with the reputation among my sisters of being the wild one.
From "How the García Girls Lost Their Accents" by Julia Alvarez
As well-received as Death Cab’s brisk run through “Transatlanticism” was, prompting a standing ovation, the crowd was even giddier for the once-in-a-decade chance to see The Postal Service.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 7, 2023
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
Diane Paulus’s dynamic, high-flying revival of “Pippin” has become a warmer, giddier show in its 16 months at the Music Box Theater, and that’s really not a bad thing at all.
From New York Times ● Aug. 22, 2014
She bought John Markley's clothes, so that his Sunday finery contained nothing giddier than a grey made-up tie, that she pinned around the collars which her own hands had ironed.
From In Our Town by Frederic Rodrigo Gruger
They made the last eight and are three matches from the giddiest glory.
From BBC ● Sep. 6, 2025
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
Buoyant and brazen in her black velour leotard, Flynn stood out as the giddiest of the bunch, often wagging her tongue from the side of her mouth as she pursued exercise stations like a tornado.
From Washington Times ● Aug. 23, 2016
Her judgment was that in her giddiest days as an oarswoman, she would certainly never have dared to set foot in such a shell.
From Historic Waterways?Six Hundred Miles of Canoeing Down the Rock, Fox, and Wisconsin Rivers by Reuben Gold Thwaites
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
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
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 property magnate fell for the late de Pompadour as a young man, fascinated by her giddying rise to prominence, according to his lawyer Jack Anderson, the sale handler.
From Reuters ● Nov. 8, 2017
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.
