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Today's Word "vertiginous"

Giddy or dizzy on

Published in Vocabulary

vertiginous \vur-TIJ-uh-nuhs\ (adjective) - 1 : Affected with vertigo; giddy; dizzy. 2 : Causing or tending to cause dizziness. 3 : Turning round; whirling; revolving. 4 : Inclined to change quickly or frequently; inconstant.

"Would she have prevented him from ever scaling his vertiginous Peak? - or would she, otherwise, have been able to accompany him to that eminence..." -- Henry James, "The Golden Bowl"

 

Vertiginous derives from Latin vertigo, "a turning round, a whirling round; giddiness," from vertere, "to turn." Related words include reverse, "to turn back (re-) or around"; subvert, "to undermine" (from sub-, "under" + vertere -- at root "to turn from under, to overturn"); and versus, "against" (from versus, "turned towards," hence "facing, opposed," from the past participle of vertere).


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