adjective
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dazed or confused
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experiencing dizziness, nausea, etc
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of woozy
An Americanism first recorded in 1895–1900; perhaps short for boozy-woozy, rhyming compound based on boozy
Explanation
If you're feeling dizzy and a little bit sick, you can say you're woozy. You're going to feel slightly woozy after you get your wisdom teeth removed, so be sure to have someone drive you home and look after you. Woozy was first recorded in the 1890s as being student slang, used to mean "foolish or behind the times" and occasionally (and confusingly) "delightful." Soon after this, the current meaning of "muddled or dazed" appeared in informal North American speech. Feel free to use it for anyone who's lightheaded or dazed: "She felt woozy on the beach from all that sun."
Vocabulary lists containing woozy
Crash
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Lawn Boy
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Compound Fracture
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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 going to take me a little while before I'm up to stage performance level," she said, adding that medicines she's taking were making her light-headed and woozy.
From Barron's ● May 4, 2026
A mother’s screams of pain carry a woozy double meaning in a thematically saturated scene in the World War II drama “Amrum.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 16, 2026
An inning later, Contreras began to feel woozy.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 25, 2025
On a woozy Monday afternoon, those sightseers who had assembled on the tower's second-floor viewing platform discovered a clever ruse: the telescopes could be used to spy on a beach volleyball match happening down below.
From BBC ● Aug. 9, 2024
He stood up, feeling a little woozy from the images that had been swirling in his vision.
From "The Kill Order (Maze Runner, Book Four; Origin)" by James Dashner
The instrumentation became less tactile and more distanced with woozier synth-pop.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 29, 2022
But pop moves fast and a new, woozier kind of tune by the likes of Ariana Grande and Dua Lipa has made such coldly strident numbers seem old-fashioned.
From The Guardian ● Dec. 21, 2018
On the aptly named You’re Dead!, the artist’s fifth album, Flying Lotus steers into woozier, jazzier territory and brings listeners on a cartoon-paced trek through the afterlife.
From Newsweek
Since the novel is set in the woozier fringes of Southern California, many are the occasions for such misunderstanding.
From Time Magazine Archive
“Swimming” released last month, was his wooziest and most insular to date.
From New York Times ● Sep. 7, 2018
Inside of two minutes Maggie has sold us four entrance tickets, and we're headed for the biggest and wooziest thriller to be found in the lot.
From Side-stepping with Shorty by Ford, Sewell
They made a very brave show of it until we got under weigh, and then they were led just about the wooziest dance you ever heard tell of.
From Sea-Hounds by Freeman, Lewis R.
And say, that was the wooziest collection ever bunched together!
From Shorty McCabe by Wilson, F. Vaux (Francis Vaux)
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.
