Definitions

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

  • adjective Having a reeling, lightheaded sensation; dizzy.
  • adjective Causing or capable of causing dizziness.
  • adjective Frivolous and lighthearted; flighty.
  • intransitive & transitive verb To become or make giddy.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Foolishly light or frivolous; governed by wild or thoughtless impulses; manifesting exuberant spirits or levity; flighty; heedless.
  • Characterized by or indicating giddiness or levity of feeling.
  • Affected with vertigo, or a swimming sensation in the head, causing liability to reel or fall; dizzy; reeling: as, to be giddy from fever or drunkenness, or in looking down from a great height.
  • Adapted to cause or to suggest giddiness; of a dizzy or dizzying nature; acting or causing to act giddily.
  • = Syn. 1 and 2. Careless, reckless, headlong, flighty, hare-brained, light-headed.
  • To make dizzy or unsteady.
  • To turn quickly; reel.

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

  • transitive verb obsolete To make dizzy or unsteady.
  • intransitive verb To reel; to whirl.
  • adjective Having in the head a sensation of whirling or reeling about; having lost the power of preserving the balance of the body, and therefore wavering and inclined to fall; lightheaded; dizzy.
  • adjective Promoting or inducing giddiness
  • adjective Bewildering on account of rapid turning; running round with celerity; gyratory; whirling.
  • adjective Characterized by inconstancy; unstable; changeable; fickle; wild; thoughtless; heedless.

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

  • adjective dizzy, feeling dizzy or unsteady and as if about to fall down
  • adjective causing dizziness: causing dizziness or a feeling of unsteadiness
  • adjective lightheartedly silly, or joyfully elated
  • adjective archaic Frivolous, impulsive, inconsistent, changeable.
  • verb obsolete, transitive To make dizzy or unsteady.

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

  • adjective having or causing a whirling sensation; liable to falling
  • adjective lacking seriousness; given to frivolity

Etymologies

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

[Middle English gidi, crazy, from Old English gidig; see gheu(ə)- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English gidi, gydi ("foolish"), from Old English gydiġ ("possessed by a spirit or demon, mad, insane"), from Proto-Germanic *gudīgaz (“ghostly, spirited”), equivalent to god +‎ -y.

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Examples

  • The word giddy has appeared in 287 New York Times articles in the past year, including on Oct. 23 in the book review, "The Radical Entertainment of Harry Belafonte", by Garrison Keillor:

    NYT > Home Page By THE LEARNING NETWORK 2011

  • Learn more about the word "giddy" and see usage examples across a range of subjects on the Vocabulary.com dictionary.

    NYT > Home Page By THE LEARNING NETWORK 2011

  • GOP strategists are again giddy at the prospect, as one GOP pollster put it: "People who have been part of our majority coalition are looking to come back to us."

    Earl Ofari Hutchinson: The New Civil War Among Whites Earl Ofari Hutchinson 2010

  • GOP strategists are again giddy at the prospect, as one GOP pollster put it: "People who have been part of our majority coalition are looking to come back to us."

    Earl Ofari Hutchinson: The New Civil War Among Whites Earl Ofari Hutchinson 2010

  • They're using tools, mixing concrete for the first time, and many are just plain giddy about how quickly the whole thing is coming together.

    Entrepreneur's Local Partnerships Help Kids Play 2010

  • Oh, that IS modest (becomes half-term giddy half-termébouler)

    Kog Zadare, only living person... Kog Zadare 2010

  • At the recent taping, he called a giddy thirty-something women up on stage.

    How Far Can Her Universe Reach? 2010

  • Here's to happy writers in giddy garrets, as opposed to bleakness and misery!

    ccfinlay: The Wages Of Happiness ccfinlay 2007

  • Now that you're all giddy from the links, why not go and Vote Mitchieville as Canada's Best Blog.

    Archive 2007-11-01 2007

  • Now that you're all giddy from the links, why not go and Vote Mitchieville as Canada's Best Blog.

    The Mayor's Linkie Love/Vote Beg 2007

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