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vertigo

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The sensation of dizziness.
  • noun An instance of such a sensation.
  • noun A confused, disoriented state of mind.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Dizziness; giddiness; a condition in which the individual or the objects around him appear to be whirling about.
  • noun [capitalized] [NL.] In conchology, a genus of pulmonates, typical of the family Vertiginidæ.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Med.) Dizziness or swimming of the head; an affection of the head in which objects, though stationary, appear to move in various directions, and the person affected finds it difficult to maintain an erect posture; giddiness.
  • noun (Zoöl.) Any one of numerous species of small land snails belonging to the genus Vertigo, having an elongated or conical spiral shell and usually teeth in the aperture.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A sensation of whirling and loss of balance, caused by looking down from a great height or by disease affecting the inner ear.
  • noun A disordered or imbalanced state of mind or things analogous to physical vertigo; mental giddiness or dizziness.
  • noun The act of whirling round and round; rapid rotation.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a reeling sensation; a feeling that you are about to fall

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Latin vertīgō, from vertere, to turn; see wer- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin vertīgō.

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Examples

  • Further, my vertigo is at a point where the highs and the lows are varying a lot.

    Barnstorming on an Invisible Segway oursin 2009

  • Loss of feeling usually again in one side of the body, loss of vision, again usually one part of your field of view or sometimes one eye, loss of balance sometimes and giddiness or what we call vertigo can also be a sign of stroke.

    unknown title 2009

  • I am still sick, and my vertigo is still travel-whomped, so my big NYE plans involve a desperate hope for hot and sour soup, on the theory that it is good for congestion and will be strongly flavored enough to help cut through the vertigo-plus-cold appetite woes. markgritter is also sick.

    Barnstorming on an Invisible Segway markgritter 2009

  • A couple days ago a friend asked a question that seemed like it might have more broad application than just the social situation he was mentioning, so I thought I would put it and my answer here: what he wanted to know was whether I am okay accepting help from people outside my immediate family in order to be able to do stuff while the stupid vertigo is still around.

    mrissa: I'm not proud. Or tired. Well, kind of tired. mrissa 2010

  • It really sucks that the vertigo is still a problem.

    mrissa: State of the Mris Report mrissa 2010

  • One of the things I have worried about with this stupid vertigo is that someone I care about will interpret my behavior as not caring about them when it's really that I can't do something because of the vertigo, or else that the price of doing that thing would be so immensely high as to be not really worth it.

    mrissa: "Rissy, 90% of the things you worry about never come to pass."--Grandpa mrissa 2010

  • One of the things I have worried about with this stupid vertigo is that someone I care about will interpret my behavior as not caring about them when it's really that I can't do something because of the vertigo, or else that the price of doing that thing would be so immensely high as to be not really worth it.

    Barnstorming on an Invisible Segway 2010

  • And it's not like the vertigo is something you actively chose specifically so you could get on people's nerves, for chrissakes.

    mrissa: "Rissy, 90% of the things you worry about never come to pass."--Grandpa mrissa 2010

  • My grandma is bringing my grandpa's walking stick over for me, because we have reached the point in vertigo treatment where my current treatment will in no way get messed up if I use a cane.

    mrissa: Milestone mrissa 2010

  • Being unable to do something due to the vertigo is not the same as not wanting to do something.

    mrissa: "Rissy, 90% of the things you worry about never come to pass."--Grandpa mrissa 2010

Comments

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  • courier12 commented on the word vertigo

    Good movie, bad illness.

    December 14, 2006

  • mollusque commented on the word vertigo

    Also a genus of tiny snails.

    March 5, 2008

  • sarra commented on the word vertigo

    “Have you got vertigo?”

    “No, I only live round the corner.”

    *dies*

    April 23, 2008

  • reesetee commented on the word vertigo

    Haha! *must tell Dad*

    April 23, 2008

  • trivet commented on the word vertigo

    It is a good dad joke.

    April 23, 2008

  • Louises commented on the word vertigo

    I could feel her sometimes looking back to her werewolf life before we'd met and feeling a kind of retroactive vertigo or nausea that she'd survived it alone so long. It was as if the sun had come up and shown her for the first time how close to the edge of a thousand foot drop she'd been walking in the dark. From "The Last Werewolf" by Glen Duncan.

    March 18, 2012

  • bilby commented on the word vertigo

    Man, I missed that sarra joke.

    February 25, 2019