Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Turning about an axis; revolving or whirling.
- adj. Affected by vertigo; dizzy. See Synonyms at giddy.
- adj. Tending to produce vertigo: "my small mind contained in earthly human limits, not lost in vertiginous space and elements unknown” ( Diana Cooper).
- adj. Inclined to change quickly; unstable.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Turning round; whirling; rotary: as, a vertiginous motion.
- Affected with vertigo; giddy; dizzy.
- Apt to turn or change; unstable.
- Apt to make one giddy; inducing giddiness: as, a vertiginous height.
Wiktionary
- adj. Having an aspect of great depth, drawing the eye to look downwards.
- adj. Inducing a feeling of giddiness, vertigo, dizziness or of whirling.
- adj. Pertaining to vertigo (in all its meanings).
- adj. Revolving; rotating; rotatory.
GNU Webster's 1913
WordNet 3.0
- adj. having or causing a whirling sensation; liable to falling
Etymologies
- From Latin vertīgō, vertīgin-, a whirling, from vertere, to turn; see version. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“He wrote surreal portraits of middle-class life reminiscent of Ionesco, though he has said his real influences were English specialists in vertiginous silliness like Lewis Carroll and P.G. Wodehouse.”
“The title refers to the vertiginous falls in Bach's chorale prelude Durch Adams Fall, which inspired the piece.”
Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph
“We too visited Cassis and took the "vertiginous" road over Cap Canille to La Ciotat.”
“And not just any heels: the only ones to be seen in are those preceded by adjectives such as "vertiginous", "teetering" and "skyscraper".”
“But the book is less a tale of a renowned author's vertiginous spiral into depression than it is a mother's poignant tribute to a Chinese-American girl who achieved success through her own intelligence, hard work and grit, but also with the extraordinary support of those closest to her.”
“In 2008 it was James Marsh with his vertiginous doc Man on Wire, in 2009 it was Duncan Jones with his philosophical sci-fi parable Moon, and last year Chris Morris became an unlikely Sundance hero with his biting jihadist comedy Four Lions.”
The Guardian: Paddy Considine: 'I'm trying to make sense of a lot of things'
“The effect of the wartime section of the journal is vertiginous.”
“A chance encounter in a Greenwich Village dive sets a Brooklyn-born secretary on a vertiginous climb toward the highest reaches of New York society.”
“He gave Yale a glancing blow but otherwise Beck's version of events is topsy-turvy and vertiginous, with no anchor tied to facts.”
The Huffington Post: Michael Conniff: Con Games: Glenn Beck's History Lesson
“In the end, Lennon couldn't duck the vertiginous myths that inspired a self-described nobody like Chapman to murder a man who deserved to live longer than most of us.”
The Huffington Post: Scott Thill: John Lennon: Working Class Mythmaker
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘vertiginous’.
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phrontistery-v
from phrontistery.info
vaccary, vaccimulgence, vaccine, vacillate, vadelect, vade-mecum, vadimony, vadose, vafrous, vagient, vagile, vagility and 396 more...
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briwref's list
defalcation, macerate, beldam, nescience, ochlocracy, bibelot, estivate, spatulated, introversive, mastoidal, belletristic, objurgation and 108 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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of Montreal
Every time I finally decipher Kevin Barnes's song lyrics, I feel somewhat smarter.
These are strange/big/obscure words and phrases from the lyrics of the band 'of Montreal' (intentiona...southern hemisphe..., paradigm, Phaidon Press, permutation, List Christie, Gemini Tactics, eluardian, persecution complex, Himmlers, parabola, Mono Club, subconscious mass... and 132 more...
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RealLifePixel's Bad-Ass Words
Words so awesome they'll kick your eyeballs' asses!
cucurbitaceous, sacerdotal, loudhailer, bildungsroman, sublation, marmoreal, recusant, velleity, hardscrabble, malinger, miasma, brennschluss and 76 more...
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gre2
aberrant, aberration, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate and 1523 more...
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adj. + adv.
vainglorious, lanuginous, altiloquent, ambisextrous, desiderative, flothery, liquescent, logoed, autotelic, tropology, erotogenic, crocky and 108 more...
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Vocab [General]
No particular specification to this list.
philology, etymology, atavistic, proscribe, inchoate, vulgate, abstruse, agnate, anodize, anthropomorphic, assiduous, augur and 89 more...
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Good Words
fenestering, cetic, immanent, quickening, archetypal, shibboleth, soma, wetware, heritable, Apotheosis, halcyon, cellar door and 482 more...
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BonMots
assiduous, progeny, hegemony, nascent, reticent, ephemera, zeitgeist, recalcitrant, copious, corporeal, cacaphonous, obstreperous and 108 more...
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New words
Words that are new to me.
autostrada, gimlet, clyster, gravida, skelped, nacreous, susurrus, intransigent, puissant, turbid, plangent, fungible and 99 more...
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ADW1
obdurate, obstinate, behest, injunction, enjoin, circumspect, ensconce, discursive, lugubrious, doleful, somber, ken and 2476 more...
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Hitch Words
Words from the lexicon of Christopher Hitchens
propinquity, fratricide, factitious, vitiate, sectarianism, ostensible, atavistic, sephardic, doyen, palpable, encephalitic, fastidious and 188 more...
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annscann's list
My words, generally
bavarois, bawbee, bawd, bawdry, libertine, russophobe, rubicund, gossamer, persnickety, claptrap, gesticulate, schadenfreudian and 199 more...
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Interesting words
ineffable, effable, immutable, amorphous, parochial, salient, ascertain, circumspect, congenial, coeval, aversion, edification and 117 more...
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My List
A list of words that I have generated over time.
cairn, cacodaemoniacal, abash, abject, abjure, abstemious, abhor, abnegate, abnegation, abscond, abstruse, acclivity and 702 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for vertiginous.
hober Used entirely too often in Perdido Street Station by China Miéville. Seriously, not a word you expect to be someone's crutch. Oct 22, 2008
gangerh Take a 'Vertigone' tablet. Feb 13, 2008
quotato Looking at that word vertiginous is making me dizzy. Feb 13, 2008
jeffazi dizzying; affected by vertigo Oct 31, 2007