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
Reynoso said the betting "stimulates many senses" for the animals on top of providing entertainment for an audience giddy with excitement ahead of the world's biggest football bonanza.
From Barron's ● Jun. 6, 2026
Akl, along with KidSTREAM board chairman Bryan Yee and guest experience director Dani Hildreth, were giddy with excitement as they took me on a tour of the museum in the days before it opened.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 22, 2026
Widdicombe said he was "giddy with excitement, honoured and a little overawed to be given the chance to step into the biggest shoes in television".
From BBC ● May 19, 2026
She isn’t anywhere near as giddy as she was when she told me about their first kiss.
From "Keeping Pace" by Laurie Morrison
Yet the truth this winter is far giddier, fuller, louder.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 18, 2020
Conner O’Malley is one of those comedians who pops up on shows or podcasts or viral videos, injects a frenzied dose of derangement and then exits, leaving behind a giddier mood.
From New York Times ● Dec. 17, 2019
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
Was there ever a giddier creature?—Yet this is the celebrated, the blazing Clarissa—Clarissa what?
From Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady — Volume 3 by Samuel Richardson
They made the last eight and are three matches from the giddiest glory.
From BBC ● Sep. 6, 2025
It’s terrific that that she gets both the story’s emotional high point and its purest, giddiest moment of comic anarchy.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 9, 2020
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
What, if anything, does it mean that the giddiest, most euphoric popular music ever produced in the United States bubbled and kicked up its heels while the country was sliding into the Great Depression?
From New York Times ● Feb. 23, 2014
Almost as soon as they could walk, they assumed the cioccie, or mocassins of untanned leather, with which they learned to run fearlessly along the edge of the giddiest mountain precipices.
From The Roman Question by Edmond About
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 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.
