Dizzy means feeling as though the room is turning around you. Feel dizzy, a dizzy spell, dizzy from standing up.
It is a symptom rather than a diagnosis, and it has many causes — low blood pressure, inner ear problems, dehydration, standing up too fast. Vertigo is the medical term for the spinning kind specifically. Dizzy heights and dizzying speed use the word for what causes the feeling. Note giddy, the near synonym, and light-headed, which usually means the faint kind rather than the spinning kind.
1adjectivedizzyFeeling as though everything is turning around you.
“She felt dizzy every time she stood up too quickly.”
synonyms: giddy, light-headed
dizzy is a physical sensation.
Old English dysig meant stupid or foolish, not unsteady. The modern sense grew out of the confusion in the head, and the older one survives in the informal use of dizzy for somebody scatterbrained.
Proto-Indo-European
*dʰwes-
Proto-West Germanic
*dusīg — stunned; dazed
Old English
dysiġ — stupid, foolish
Middle English
dysy
English, today
dizzy
From Middle English dysy, desy, dusi, from Old English dysiġ (“stupid, foolish”), from Proto-West Germanic dusīg (“stunned; dazed”). Akin to West Frisian dize (“fog”), Dutch deusig, duizig (“dizzy”), duizelig (“dizzy”), German dösig (“sleepy; stupid”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA