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Giddiness   Listen
Giddiness

noun
1.
An impulsive scatterbrained manner.  Synonym: silliness.
2.
A reeling sensation; a feeling that you are about to fall.  Synonyms: dizziness, lightheadedness, vertigo.






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"Giddiness" Quotes from Famous Books



... exposed to continual dangers of illusion or seduction, amidst the artifices of hypocrites and a wicked court. St. Chrysostom observes,[2] that the path of virtue is narrow, and lies between precipices, in which it is easier for the traveller to be seized with giddiness even near the end of his course, and fall. Hence this father most grievously laments the misfortune of king Ozias, who, after long practising the most heroic virtues, fell, and perished through pride; and he strenuously exhorts all who walk in the service of God, constantly to live in fear, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... kindled a good fire, and for the first time an agreeable warmth spread through the room. In order better to retain it, we stopped up the hole we had made to let the smoke escape, and merrier than usual, went to bed and began chatting together; but soon, giddiness and then stupefaction attacked us, and had not one of the party had the presence of mind to crawl to the door and open it, we would soon have been suffocated by the poisonous gas which came from the coal. Thus ended the year 1596. The next year commenced with the same ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur

... speed enough with his three legs, let me drop on a ridge tile, and made his escape. Here I sat for some time, three hundred yards from the ground, expecting every moment to be blown down by the wind, or to fall by my own giddiness, and come tumbling over and over from the ridge to the eaves; but an honest lad, one of my nurse's footmen, climbed up, and, putting me into his breeches pocket, brought ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... of infus. Digitalis every eight hours; the proportion [Symbol: dram]iss. to eight ounces of water and [Symbol: ounce]i. of aq. n. m. sp.—7th Day, The infusion had neither purged, nor vomited him: he only complained once or twice of giddiness. His belly was now very hard, rather black on the right side the navel, and his legs amazingly swelled. Ordered a bolus with rhubarb and calomel, to be taken in the morning, and [Symbol: ounce]ii. julep salin. cum tinct. canthar. gutt. forty ter die.—12th Day, nearly in the same state, except his ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering

... Ireland in August, fearing the worst; but Stella rallied, and in the spring of 1727 he returned to London. In August, however, there came alarming news, when Swift was himself suffering from giddiness and deafness. To Dr. Sheridan he wrote that the last act of life was always a tragedy at best: "it is a bitter aggravation to have one's best friend go before one." Life was indifferent to him; if he recovered from his disorder it would only be to feel the loss of "that person for whose sake ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... man, which was about a month before his death, he laboured under rending cough, with a scanty tough mucous expectoration—oppressive dyspnoea, ascites, general anasarca, occasional giddiness, and throbbing headach on motion, or on assuming the standing position. His countenance was of a light blue or slate colour, and his upper and lower extremities had much the same appearance. His lips, ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar

... without affecting the destiny of Europe. I see the inward workings of fear struggling with pride in an ardent, enterprising, and tumultuous mind. I see all the captious jealousy of conscious usurpation, dreaded, detested, and obeyed, the giddiness and intoxication of splendid but unmerited success, the arrogance, the presumption, the selfwill of unlimited and idolized power, and more dreadful than all in the plenitude of authority, the restless and incessant activity of ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... against vanity. Before he left Ireland he contracted a disorder, as he thought, by eating too much fruit. The original of diseases is commonly obscure. Almost everybody eats as much fruit as he can get, without any great inconvenience. The disease of Swift was giddiness with deafness, which attacked him from time to time, began very early, pursued him through life, and at last sent him to the grave, deprived of reason. Being much oppressed at Moor Park by this grievous malady, he was advised to try his native air, and went to Ireland; but finding no benefit, ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson

... heart of many an ordinary man had, perchance, inscriptions which he could not read. But it was impossible to dwell in his vicinity without inhaling more or less the mountain atmosphere of his lofty thought, which, in the brains of some people, wrought a singular giddiness,—new truth being as heady as new wine. Never was a poor little country village infested with such a variety of queer, strangely dressed, oddly behaved mortals, most of whom took upon themselves to be important agents of the world's destiny, yet were ...
— The Old Manse (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... still faintly; "the giddiness is passing off. . . . Do not heed me, Sir Andrew; I assure ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... present made place for them, and Rouletabille, who for some moments had been showing marks of fatigue and of a giddiness natural enough in a young man who isn't in the habit of drinking the finest champagnes, profited by the diversion to get a corner of the sofa not far from Prince Galitch, who occupied the place at ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux

... afforded a poor hold for his fingers. Violently exerting himself, with both hands he wrenched away the weapon. The flint-head lacerating his flesh and scraping his shoulder bones caused sharpest agony. The pain gave away to a sudden sense of giddiness; he tried to run; a dark mist veiled his sight; he stumbled and fell. Then he seemed to sink into a great darkness, and knew ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey

... soldiers were such a danger to the lambs of his flock. Domestic disasters in his parish came to his ears from time to time; cases of young girls whose heads were turned by soldiers, so that they were about to become mothers. They seemed to him pitiful indeed; but he could not forgive them for their giddiness, for putting temptation in the way of brave young men, fighting, or about to fight. The glamour which surrounded soldiers was not excuse enough. When the babies were born, and came to his notice, he consulted a Committee he had formed, of three married ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... "for the King's Drops.... I felt very ailing when I rose.... I walked about there; but felt no better. I nearly fell from giddiness as I came ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson

... will be the blow on the back of your head, when you fell just now, that has produced this feeling of giddiness. Let me help you to lie down" (for his mattress was on deck); "the sensation ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell

... was in the room while it was yet turning round with me and before I had the power to stir. If I had had it, I should have hurried away. I had not even the presence of mind, in my giddiness, to retire to Ada in the window, or to see the window, or to know where it was. I heard my name and found that my guardian was presenting me before I could move to ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... freely to pass, and the whole mass of blood, being disordered, either overloads the small veins of the brain, or by too quick a motion, causes a hurry and confusion of the mind, from which ensues a giddiness and at length a fury. The abundance of bile, which is rarely found to have any tolerable secretion in such patients, both begets and carries on the disorder." Again, it will be seen that there is nothing more ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... cloak-room, and was soon whirling in a cab along the Glasgow Road. The change of movement and position, the sight of the lamps twinkling to the rear, and the smell of damp and mould and rotten straw which clung about the vehicle, wrought in him strange alternations of lucidity and mortal giddiness. ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson

... self-consciousness enhanced her state of giddiness. A titter seemed to run just a scratch beneath the ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst

... much. The giddiness from which he was suffering mastered him, and he fell over sidewise on to the fast-heating sand, but with his left foot fast in the stirrup-iron, while the pony kept on a few feet before stopping short and turning to gaze down in ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... the beginning of the season from giddiness; she asked if sea-baths would do her any good; she began talking of her convent, Charles of his school; words came to them. They went up into her bedroom. She showed him her old music-books, the little prizes ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... at Lisbon. "At the first shock the inhabitants rushed into the streets; the earth yawned at their feet and the houses tottered and fell on every side." I staggered past the Captain into the street; a giddiness came over me; the earth yawned at my feet, and the houses threatened to fall in on every side of me. How distinctly I remember that momentary sense of confusion when everything in the world seemed toppling ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... Mont Valerien; Neuilly, with her bridge taken and re-taken, her barricades abandoned and re-conquered, has been for the last few days like a vast abyss, into which the Federal battalions, seized with mortal giddiness, are precipitated one after another. Each house is a fortress. Yesterday, the gendarmes had advanced as far as the market of Sablonville; this morning they were driven back beyond the church. Upon this church, a child; the son of Monsieur Leullier, planted a red flag amidst a shower ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... masticatory. Its consumption is immense, and has been said to equal that of tobacco by Western peoples. It is prepared for chewing by inclosing in the leaves a slice of the areca nut, and a small portion of lime. It is thought to act as a stimulant to the digestive organs, but causes giddiness and other unpleasant symptoms to those not accustomed ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders

... A FULL HABIT, who are subject to headache, giddiness, drowsiness, and singing in the ears, arising from too great a flow of blood to the head, should never be without them, as many dangerous symptoms will be entirely carried off by their timely use; and for elderly people, where an occasional aperient ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli

... on with his sighs and jubilations with the utmost coolness, when his companions suddenly saw him reel forward, and he and his horse fell down in a lump. Was it giddiness, or worse still, suffocation, caused by the high temperature? They ran to him, exclaiming: "Paganel! ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... don't know! Fits of suffocation; giddiness; and, all of a sudden, an agonizing pain, as if I were going to die. That's the ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France

... fixed upon her. He tried to answer her question, which he had only half heard. But he could not form an intelligible sentence. There was a giddiness in his brain which he had never felt before; he trembled, and the victim of an impulse which forced him toward her, he threw his arms about her and kissed ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... the ground was everywhere hard and frozen, and I experienced the first symptoms of lassitude, headache, and giddiness; which however, were but slight, and only came on with ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... to receive anything from another; that I have such a wife, so obedient, and so affectionate, and so simple; that I had abundance of good masters for my children; and that remedies have been shown to me by dreams, both others, and against bloodspitting and giddiness ...; and that, when I had an inclination to philosophy, I did not fall into the hands of any sophist, and that I did not waste my time on writers [of histories], or in the resolution of syllogisms, or occupy myself about the investigation of appearances ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius

... joined us in the drawing-room at North Villa, he would suddenly stop before we had exchanged more than three or four words, murmur something, in a voice unlike his usual voice, about an attack of spasm and giddiness, and leave the room. These fits of illness had something in their nature of the same secrecy which distinguished everything else connected with him: they produced no external signs of distortion, no unusual paleness in his face—you could not guess what pain he was suffering, ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... transition to Flanagan—the contemplation of whose perfidious vengeance made him spring from his seat in a paroxysm of indignant but intense hatred, so utterly furious that the swelling tempest which it sent through his veins caused him to reel with absolute giddiness. ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... therefore to prepare for it.—But this is not writ so much for my reader's memento, as to tell him, that Dr. Donne would often in his private discourses, and often publicly in his sermons, mention the many changes both of his body and mind, especially of his mind from a vertiginous giddiness; and would as often say, "His great and most blessed change was from a temporal to a spiritual employment"; in which he was so happy, that he accounted the former part of his life to be lost; and the beginning of it to be, from his first entering into Sacred Orders, and serving his most ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne

... soon as they were of sufficient age to be hypnotised, were thus converted into beautifully punctual and trustworthy machine minders, and released forthwith from the long, long thoughts of youth. Aeronautical pupils, who gave way to giddiness, could be relieved from their imaginary terrors. In every street were hypnotists ready to print permanent memories upon the mind. If anyone desired to remember a name, a series of numbers, a song or a speech, it could ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells

... which cost him his life, and France the loss of many brave soldiers and much treasure. General Leclerc, whose name is now almost forgotten, or held in light esteem, was a kind and good man. He was passionately in love with his wife, whose giddiness, to put it mildly, afflicted him sorely, and threw him into a deep and habitual melancholy painful to witness. Princess Pauline (who was then far from being a princess) had married him willingly, and of her own choice; but this did not prevent her tormenting her husband by her ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... A queer buzzing in his ears and an overpowering feeling of giddiness made him close his eyes. When he opened them, the boy had disappeared. Jeff saw that his horse had been tied up in the ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... Gelert, the dog of Llewellyn, poem on the death of Gentian, a stomachic and tonic Ghoo-khan, or wild ass, hunted by Persian greyhounds Giddiness, nature and treatment of Ginger, a cordial and tonic Glass, powdered, the best vermifuge Goitre, nature of cause and treatment of Good qualities of the dog Goodwood kennel, description of plan of Grecian ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... being the diaphragm. They only gave way to very profuse bleeding and blistering, which under higher assistance saved my life. My recovery was slow and tedious from the state of exhaustion. I could neither stir for weakness and giddiness, nor read for dazzling in my eyes, nor listen for a whizzing sound in my ears, nor even think for lack of the power of arranging my ideas. So I had a comfortless time of it for about a week. Even yet I by no means feel, as the copy-book ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... dishes, the hissing of the frying-pan, the bubbling of saucepans, the low monotonous waltzing of the jack - with a dreadful click every now and then as if it had met with some mortal accident to its head, in a fit of giddiness - and all the other preparations in ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens

... felt the absence in Bazarov of all gentility, of all that superiority which at once attracts and overawes. In her eyes he was both an excellent doctor and a simple man. She looked after her baby without constraint in his presence; and once when she was suddenly attacked with giddiness and headache—she took a spoonful of medicine from his hand. Before Nikolai Petrovitch she kept, as it were, at a distance from Bazarov; she acted in this way not from hypocrisy, but from a kind of feeling of propriety. Pavel Petrovitch she ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... back-stay, and commenced a rapid and precipitous descent to the deck. A few months before, he would have descended laboriously and fearfully by way of the shrouds; sliding down a backstay would then have rubbed his palms raw, and visited giddiness upon him. But now his hands were rope calloused, and his wits height proof. He was now the equal, for agility and daring, with any man on the ship. He had won, without much trouble, a ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer

... a giddiness creeping over her; how close the air was. Her nerves were at their utmost tension; another strain upon the sharply strung chords would overcome her. She felt this vaguely. If she should be baffled now! She could ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch

... cerebellum usually produces blindness, giddiness, a tendency to move backwards, a staggering, irregular gait, and a feeling of insecurity in maintaining various positions. There is no loss of consciousness, or other disturbance ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... encounter with that swordsman, whose skill he now recognised as being of a different class from his own, a class of which he knew nothing. All his own feints and passes were known, while those of his antagonist had been strange and new, and he might well have even others. The stranger's giddiness did not alter the situation, for Rodriguez knew that his handicap was fair and even generous. He believed he was near his grave, and could see no spark of light to banish that dark belief; yet more chances than we can see often guard us on such occasions. The absence ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany

... his feet. The giddiness was gone. He flung off his dust-stained garments, as if they held all of his past weakness and misery. He plunged his head into the clear, cold water in the big basin on the pine table; when he emerged, colour had mounted to his pale face, and depression ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... of giddiness at the thought of the audacity of the man, who dared to present himself to her! But when the physician repeated, in the softest tone of affectionate interest: "Well, my poor child! how have we spent the night?" she pressed her hands to her ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... been assisted to his feet, he stood for a moment, with his legs apart, swaying with giddiness; then, aware that they were observing this, he looked at the Colonel and laughed. It was a silent laugh, of the eyes and mouth and a movement in the throat. One could not help thinking that should he let it out it would ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris

... unusual distance. Then, as though involuntarily, he drew her close, so that she could feel his heart beating like something alive, in prison, knocking to come out, and her own heart quickened. A slight giddiness made her head spin, and she asked to stop before the music sobbed ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... "That giddiness again," cried the King, with a sigh. "The doctor is right. Early to-morrow morning, then, gentlemen," he said, with a peculiar smile. "Leoni is king now, and reigns in our stead. I like not his palace, but we shall be ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn

... illusions may not improbably have had a bewildering effect on the mind of the reader. To keep the mental eye, like the bodily eye, for any time intently fixed on one object is apt to produce a feeling of giddiness. And in the case of a subject like illusion, the effect is enormously increased by the disturbing character of the object looked at. Indeed, the first feeling produced by our survey of the wide field of illusory error might be expressed pretty accurately by the ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully

... peculiar anxiety about the young priest's state of health. And Serge, greatly surprised, assured him that he was in splendid trim, and had neither fits of giddiness or of ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... repeat the piercing cry, the thing grasping her relaxes its hold, letting her go altogether, and she feels herself falling, as from a great height. The sensation of giddiness is succeeded by a shock, which almost deprives her of consciousness. It is but the fall, broken by a plunge into water. Then there is a drumming in her ears, a choking in the throat; in short, the ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... idea of being subjected to an eaves-dropper on such an occasion. Prudence, and the necessity of suppressing my passion, and obeying Diana's reiterated command of "Leave me! leave me!" came in time to prevent my rash action. I left the apartment in a wild whirl and giddiness of mind, which I in vain attempted to compose when I returned ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... sir. (Unable to restrain his tears.) You in a false nose, Walter! (He sinks faintly into a chair at the table.) I beg pardon, ma'am, I'm sure. A little giddiness—- ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw

... in the marvellous ecstasy which all high summits develop in the mind; and now without giddiness, for I was beginning to be accustomed to these sublime aspects of nature. My dazzled eyes were bathed in the bright flood of the solar rays. I was forgetting where and who I was, to live the life of elves and ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... was working in the field at a little distance from Mr. Mudge, he became conscious of a peculiar feeling of giddiness which compelled him to cling to the hoe for ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger

... troubles that arose between the finance and war departments, that he would not separate them, after having once joined them together. At last, Chamillart could bear up against his heavy load no longer. The vapours seized him: he had attacks of giddiness in the head; his digestion was obstructed; he grew thin as a lath. He wrote again to the King, begging to be released from his duties, and frankly stated that, in the state he was, if some relief was not afforded him, everything would go wrong and perish. He always left a large ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... first in the case of falling or jumping down. Giddiness may be an almost intolerable torture, and falling nothing of the sort. I once saw the face of an old man who had flung himself out of a high window in Rome, and who had been killed instantly on the pavement; it was not simply a serene face, it was glad, exalted. ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... there is certain death." I explained to them that, under certain circumstances, carbonic acid gas was frequently accumulated in caves or grottoes, rendering the air unfit for respiration; producing giddiness of the head, fainting, and eventually death. I sent them to collect some hay, which I lighted and threw into the cave; this was immediately extinguished; we repeated the experiment several times with the same result. I now saw ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss

... own judgement too completely not to be sure that her sisters were, perhaps unknowingly, disguising a slowness of perception they were ashamed of, by thus partially accusing her of giddiness. She bit ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... we are disposed to approve or the reverse, might be called strong sense or sullen temper. But he had some reputation in the service as a bold, if not an able officer. He had saved the French troops in America by his daring, from the effects of some blunders committed by the giddiness of their commander-in-chief; and as his loyalty was not merely known but violent, and his hatred of the new faction in France not merely determined but furious, he was regarded as one of the pillars of the royal cause. The Marquis ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... had a cranium as hard as iron, he probably could not have received such a storm of fisticuffs without giving up the ghost. Fortunately for him, he had one of those excellent Breton heads that break the sticks which beat them. Save for a certain giddiness, he came out of the scramble safe and sound. Far from losing his presence of mind by the disadvantageous position in which he found himself, he supported himself upon the ground with his left hand, and, passing his other arm behind him, he wound it around the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... have said, I was not in the secret, and did not detect the transition. As I partook of the dish I remember feeling a sudden giddiness and a slight nausea. The antidote, to those who had not taken the drug, must have been, I suppose, in the nature of a mild emetic. A mist seemed to obscure the faces of my fellow-guests, and slowly the tide of conversation ebbed away. First Vennard, then Cargill, became ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... cholera showed premonitory symptoms; such as giddiness, sickness, diarrhoea, or sunken eyes and distressed look; but sometimes the substance followed its forecoming shadow so quickly, and the crisis was so rapid, that there was no time to apply any remedies. An American carpenter complained of giddiness and sickness—warning ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole

... sense of utter loneliness and isolation which is only known to those who travel through the air. He saw Mr Hingeston pull a lever with his right hand and turn the steering-wheel with his left. He felt the blood running up to his head, and then came a moment of giddiness. When he opened his eyes the Auriole was dropping as gently as a bird on the wing towards the trees of ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith

... subjectis, et debilare superbos, was disregarded. The loyalists suffered, the arrogant and turbulent triumphed. Every house, Sir, in the kingdom is infested with grievances. Fathers grieve over the extravagances of their sons, the giddiness of their daughters, and the ceaseless murmurs of their wives, while they in their turn unite in complaining of parental parsimony and meanness. Social intercourse I have long since given up, for I am tired of tedious narratives of the delinquencies of servants and the degeneracy of ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... dirty and ragged, several of them barefooted, nearly all bare-headed, but they danced with noisy merriment. One there was, a little girl, on crutches; incapable of taking a partner, she stumped round and round, circling upon the pavement, till giddiness came upon her and she had to fall back and lean against the wall, laughing aloud at her weakness. Gilbert stepped up to her, and put a penny into her hand; then, before she had recovered from ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... say that, yielding to the giddiness, I swooned: and yet I can remember no interval. The circles seemed to have hold of me, to be drawing me down, and yet down; until, like a diver half-bursting for breath, I found strength, sprang upwards, and reached the surface with ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... arrival or kept as a slave, for the Norse and Saxon tongues were so similar that he was perfectly able to understand the language of his captors. A party of twelve men accompanied him, four of whom bore the litter, and were relieved at intervals by the others. After some hours the feeling of giddiness and weakness passed off, and on the men stopping to change bearers he expressed his ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty

... the stone thundering over the obstacles in its way until it disappeared in a cloud of dust. It seemed as if the whole mountain trembled beneath him; a mist bleared his eyes; and as the blood rushed to his head, a deadly giddiness threatened to overpower him. He felt an impulse to throw himself over, which he could scarcely resist; and it was only by falling on his face and shutting his eyes that he recovered his presence of mind. After ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... floor, and then to lift them up together suddenly for a half second. When I fell, up I sprang and recommenced my play. Bang! Bang! With every increasing noise I went against the floor, and at last I began to feel a singular but agreeable giddiness in my head. I knew how to jump! I knew ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti

... up, and that the front was strewn with ruins, forming a quay reaching from the escarpment to the counter-escarpment. Some soldiers were running to and fro upon it. I took them for Belgian gendarmes and called to them. But I was being suffocated, giddiness seized upon me, and I fell to the ground. When I came to, I found myself in the midst of my comrades, who tried to come to my aid. Among them was a German major, who gave me a glass of water to drink. As I learnt afterwards, it was then about ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various

... an overdose it acts as a poison, producing vomiting, giddiness, delirium, convulsions, and sometimes death. Opium is the best antidote for camphor, whether in excess or taken as a poison. Mode of exhibition.—It may be rubbed up with almond emulsion, or mucilage, or the yolk of eggs, and by this means suspended in water, or combined ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... did not see the ring after this, but Annie was very distant in her manner toward me; her actions showed as plainly as if she had spoken, that she considered me in the light of an unreasonable guardian, who wished to deprive her of all enjoyment. Her giddiness and perverseness caused me much trouble, and I greatly feared she would become reckless after my departure. She was my favorite sister, however, and no matter how she might treat me, I could never lose ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton

... But our Lord says that in heaven there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage, and what would heaven be to him without Nora? No more than a union of souls, and he wanted her body as well as her soul. He must pray. He knew the feeling well—a sort of mental giddiness, a delirium in the brain; and it increased rapidly, urging him to fall on his knees. If he resisted, it was because he was ashamed and feared to pray to God to reserve Nora for him. But the whirl in his brain soon deprived him of all power of resistance, ...
— The Lake • George Moore

... knocked down by a stag and hounds in a hunt. But the stars were not to be beaten, and though the child recovered, went in for the game a second time in his twenty-third year, when he fell, in a fit of giddiness, from a tower, and, to use Lady Elsabeth's words, was 'mash'd to a mummy.' Still the battle was not over, and the mummy returned in due course to its human form, though considerably disfigured. Mars and Saturn were naturally disgusted ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... loftier harps than mine, but whose sordid greed and unspeakable arrogance has yet to be said or sung. Socially, she knew something fie-fie about most of our old nobility; and her class-sympathy, supported by the quasi-sacredness which invests aristocratic giddiness, lent tenderness of colour and accuracy of detail to some queer revelations. She could make me fancy ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... tyrants, and in their raillery would say that the Achaean general was usually troubled with a looseness when he was to fight a battle, that the sound of a trumpet struck him with a drowsiness and a giddiness, and that, when he had drawn up his army and given the word, he used to ask his lieutenants and officers whether there was any further need of his presence now the die was cast, and then went aloof, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... palace. She then placed them both on the back of a winged ram, with a fleece of pure gold, which had been given to her by Hermes; and on this wonderful animal brother and sister rode through the air over land and sea; but on the way Helle, becoming seized with giddiness, fell into the sea (called after her the Hellespont) and ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... gallantly at the battle of Queenston Heights. Nor had his party shown any disposition to ignore his claims. On the contrary, they had pushed him forward with a rapidity which would have turned any head with a natural tendency to giddiness. He had been appointed Attorney-General of the Province before he had been called to the bar, and when he was only twenty-one years of age—a special Act of Parliament being subsequently passed to confirm the proceeding. In 1815 he had been ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... Liturgy, (43) against the Liturgy, which was which was generally in great held in great and general reverence, (15 a) even with reverence. many of those who were not friends to (5) the other. In Incurring or seeming to incur, by his giddiness, which then much his giddiness, the displeasure of displeased, or seemed to his father, who at that time, displease, (30) (43) his father, beside strictly conforming to the who still appeared highly Church himself, was very bitter conformable, and exceedingly sharp against Nonconformists, the young ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott

... utterly foreign sensation was absolutely painful to the boy; and as the land appeared to glide away from them, a sensation of giddiness attacked him as he sat hearing conversation going on, but understanding nothing, till, as he turned his eyes in the captain's direction, he saw that this gentleman was watching ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn

... eaten nothing now for two days. My mind much disordered from headache and giddiness;—but my heart is ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea

... exacting. Claude questioned her, feeling uneasy at seeing her look so pale and out of sorts, with her eyes bright with fever. Never had that pious house, that vault, without air or light, where she died of boredom, caused her so much suffering. Her fits of giddiness had come upon her again; the want of exercise made the blood throb in her temples. She owned to him that she had fainted one evening in her room, as if she had been suddenly strangled by a leaden hand. Still she did ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... he was giddy with wine and went in, in this plight, to his wife, who said to him, 'What ails thee?' Quoth he, 'We were making merry to-day, when one of my companions brought us liquor; so my friends drank and I with them, and this giddiness came upon me.' 'O my lord,' said she, 'hast thou forgotten thy fathers injunction and done that from which he forbade thee, in consorting with lewd folk?' 'These are of the sons of the merchants,' answered he; ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous

... and bore my journey perfectly well, except that I had the headache all yesterday; but it is gone to-day, or at least made way for a little giddiness which the water gave me this morning at first. If it does not do me good very soon, I shall leave it; for I dislike the place exceedingly, and am disappointed in it. Their new buildings that are so admired, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... said the sergeant confidently. "The colonel would be sure to send out to see why we didn't come back. There's a lot of our fellows out yonder that the enemy is firing at, and we can't see them for the haze. It is haze, and not giddiness and our eyes." ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn

... laugh, and encouraged her in her thousand antics. Lady Castlewood watched the child gravely and sadly: the little one was pert in her replies to her mother, yet eager in her protestations of love and promises of amendment; and as ready to cry (after a little quarrel brought on by her own giddiness) until she had won back her mamma's favor, as she was to risk the kind lady's displeasure by fresh outbreaks of restless vanity. From her mother's sad looks she fled to her father's chair and boozy laughter. She already set the one against the other: and the little rogue delighted in ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... however brave in the field, was one of those whom a great height strikes with giddiness and sickness. He shrunk back from the view of the precipice, on the verge of which Cromwell was standing with complete indifference, till the General, catching the hand of his follower, pulled him forward as far as he would advance. "I think," said the General, "I have found the clew, but by this ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... stuck fast to the deck planking by the blood which had flowed from the wound and had by this time dried. To loosen this flap of skin cost me the most exquisite pain, and when at length I had succeeded in freeing myself, and rose to my hands and knees, so violent a sensation of giddiness and nausea suddenly swept over me that I again collapsed, remaining insensible for quite ten minutes ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... that first giddiness had passed, it was succeeded by another intoxication—the joy of being an individual, the knowledge that he was separate, not a part of a multitude. Without the Skin he could think as he pleased. He did not have ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer

... meditate fresh plans, and still endeavour to sow division, and to overthrow the trophies you have just raised to glory and to national honour. The same enthusiasm, ill directed, might produce the greatest crimes. Fellow citizens! UNION and TRANQUILLITY. The giddiness of party is unworthy of free men. Fulfil your duties. Yield to the gentle exhortation of your august Prince;... but in return say to him 'Sire! ENERGY and VIGILANCE. Energy to promote good,—Vigilance to prevent evil. The whole world has now its eyes fixed on you. The steps ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham

... crabs, both of land and sea, and both sorts very big. These are good to feed servants and slaves, whose palates they please, but are very hurtful to the sight: besides, being eaten too often, they cause great giddiness in the head, with much weakness of the brain; so that, very frequently, they are deprived of sight for a quarter of ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin

... had only followed blindly where he had led. Once there, she knew well the chasm on whose edge she was balancing. Natural instinct alone would have told her that. The height was dizzy. She had known well that if ever she gazed down, it would be that. Her head swam with the giddiness of it. She kept her eyes fixed rigidly on the plate before her, not daring to look up, or ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... coffee came in, ready poured out in two cups. My attentive friend handed me one of the cups with a bow. I was parched with thirst, and drank it off at a draught. Almost instantly afterwards, I was seized with a fit of giddiness, and felt more completely intoxicated than ever. The room whirled round and round furiously; the old soldier seemed to be regularly bobbing up and down before me like the piston of a steam-engine. I was half deafened by a violent singing in my ears; a feeling ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various

... goes off in the course of a week or fortnight. During the time the person is in this state, it is with the utmost difficulty he is made to eat or drink. I questioned a man, who had thus been afflicted, as to the manner of his being seized, and he told me he only felt a giddiness without any pain, and that afterwards he did not know ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham

... seemed to be running like quicksilver across the ground licking up the dry greasewood with indeed a flaming tongue. She glanced once behind, warned by the heat. The fire was closing in upon her. A puff of smoke suddenly enveloped her. She coughed. Her head began to swim and a fit of giddiness assailed her. She rocked in her saddle and the pony came to a sudden standstill, faced by the mass of rolling ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... gloss of ebony. It was a whirlwind of a dance, and an old wizard with a tom-tom, and a dark giant with metal castanets made music for the dancers, taking eccentric steps themselves as they played. The Soudanese fell into an ecstasy of giddiness, running about on their hands and feet like huge black tarantulas, or turning themselves into human wheels, to roll through the bed of the dying fire and out on the other side, sending up showers of sparks. All the while, they uttered a barking chant, in time to the wicked music, which seemed to ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... globe, and a bearded tail to it, diminishing gradually to a point. This beautiful constellation seemed very sportive and delightful. It was much in the form of a tadpole! and, without ceasing, went, full of playful giddiness, up and down, all over the heaven on the concave surface of the nutshell. One time it would be at that part of the heavens under my feet, and in the next minute would be over my head. It was never at rest, but for ever going east, ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe

... he remained in a state of exhaustion, unable either to stir for weakness and giddiness; or to read, for dazzling in his eyes; or to listen, for a whizzing sound in his ears—all indications of too much brain-work and mental worry. Yet, as soon as he was able to resume his labours, we find him characteristically employed in helping his ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... giddiness, but by a violent impulse of the will he threw it off, and at the same time bounded to the window, sending the beam, which was broken off by the shock, hissing down into ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne

... din and uproar of battle—the most splendid battle that has ever been painted in music. At its first performance in Germany I saw people tremble as they listened to it, and some rose up suddenly and made violent gestures quite unconsciously. I myself had a strange feeling of giddiness, as if an ocean had been upheaved, and I thought that for the first time for thirty years Germany had found ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... of the impulse that came with the sight of the veteran companion that had shielded him from the sun on the trail. It was good to have any kind of an impulse after his giddiness on the balcony at sight of all the phantasmagoria of ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... giddiness is? Pray that she may not seize you, this mighty "Loreley" of the heights, this evil-genius from the land of the sylphides; she whizzes around her prey, and whirls it into the abyss. She sits on the narrow rocky path, ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen

... to him did not take him very far away from Wittenberg. He remained there, actively engaged in this work, during the following months, and with some few intervals, up to the spring. From the end of January 1529 he again suffered for some weeks from giddiness and a rushing noise in his head; he knew not whether it was exhaustion or the buffeting of Satan, and entreated his friends for their prayers on his behalf, that he might continue steadfast in ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... look out of the lock and to call Johnny Simms back. He gazed into absolute blackness on the ground. He felt a queasy giddiness because there was no hand-railing at the outer lock door and he knew the depth of the fall outside. He raged, within himself. Johnny Simms would feel triumphant when he was called. He would require to be pleaded with to return. He would pompously set terms for returning ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... images rose in his mind without sensation or effort, and experiencing the giddiness and exultation of the orator, he strove to win her with eloquence. And all his magnetism was in his hands and eyes—deep blue eyes full of fire and light were fixed upon her—hands, soft yet powerful hands held hers, sometimes were clenched ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... convinced of the existence of such elemental beings; frequent accidents in mines showed the potency of the metallic spirits, which so tormented the workmen in some of the German mines by blindness, giddiness, and sudden sickness, that they have been obliged to abandon mines well known to be rich in silver. A metallic spirit at one sweep annihilated twelve miners, who were all found dead together. The fact was unquestionable; and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... times slightly ridiculous. But we must not judge Sterne in this matter by too severe a standard. He was by nature neither a dignified nor a self-contained man: he had a head particularly unfitted to stand sudden elevation; and it must be allowed that few men's power of resisting giddiness at previously unexplored altitudes was ever so severely tried. It was not only "the great" in the sense of the high in rank and social distinction by whom he was courted; he was welcomed also by the eminent in genius and learning; and it would be no ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... turmoil the sight of these signs caused in him. He dreaded POSSESSION by any spirit but the one. Whatever he did now he must do calmly. Therefore to bed he went. But before he gave himself up to sleep, he prayed God to watch him, lest the commotion in his heart and the giddiness of hope should make something rise that would come between him and the light eternal. The man in whom any earthly hope dims the heavenly presence and weakens the mastery of himself, is on the by-way through the meadow to the castle ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... Children begin to chew betel very young, and yet their teeth are always beautifully white till pains are taken to disfigure them by filing and staining them black. To persons who are not habituated to the composition it causes a strong giddiness, astringes and excoriates the tongue and fauces, and deadens for a time the faculty of taste. During the puasa, or fast of ramadan, the Mahometans among them abstain from the use of betel whilst the sun continues above ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... he answered. For a moment a sense of giddiness came over him, as though he were suddenly dazzled. 'Could it be really true?' he asked himself more than once. Audrey did not seem to guess his feelings: she was perfectly tranquil and at her ease; she had laid aside her hat and jacket to please ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... at the pit of the stomach afterwards. This is soon followed by loss of appetite, costive bowels, and pain on the left side; then, the head will be more or less affected, sometimes with much throbbing, singing in the ears, and always some degree of giddiness, ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.

... enormous differences, and even contradictions, as to what theorizers have considered desirable and necessary. There is scarcely an important point which the highest authorities may not be cited for or against. We must not close our eyes to this fact. "The giddiness that comes from contemplating the depths of knowledge is the beginning of philosophy, as the god Thaumas was, according to the fable, the father of Iris." (Plato.) In a precisely similar manner, the student of public economy (politics, the philosophy of ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... say—but pr'ythee smile,— 'Twas a hard trip to Paphos isle; By your keen roving glances caught, 275 And to a beauteous tyrant brought; My head with giddiness turn'd round, With strongest fetters I was bound; I fancy from my frame and face, You thought me of th' Angola race{17}: 280 You kept me long indeed, my dear, Between the decks of hope and fear; But this and all the seasoning o'er, My blessings ...
— No Abolition of Slavery - Or the Universal Empire of Love, A poem • James Boswell

... not know—we were much too anxious to disentangle ourselves from the affair and get out of range of the eye of the old gentleman in the bath-chair to make minute inquiries. As soon as we were sufficiently cool and sufficiently recovered from our giddiness and nausea and confusion of mind to do so we stood up and, skirting the crowd, directed our steps back along the road below the Metropole towards Gibberne's house. But amidst the din I heard very distinctly the gentleman who had been sitting beside the lady of the ruptured sunshade ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... probable to me that these rogues, from long fasting, contract a weakness of brain, a giddiness, a kind of delirium, which makes them imagine that they are gifted with superior wisdom, and give themselves out for physicians. They impose upon themselves first, and afterwards ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen

... Augustine was waiting for her downstairs and that in little more than an hour her husband would be with her. And suddenly the agony lightened. A giddiness of relief came over her. He was kind: he did not judge her: he knew all, yet he respected her. Augustine was like the bleak, stony moor; she must shut her eyes and stumble on towards the firelight. And as she thought of that nearing brightness, of her husband's eyes, that never judged, never ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... every side he could feel the heat of the flames. Once a spark dropped upon his shoulder and fired his shirt. With a cry he beat it out and strove harder. The pain in his foot was unbearable. It made the perspiration stand out upon his forehead. It made him whirl with giddiness. But on he plunged, fighting the fire, the smoke and the pain and striving his ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump

... limit for mortal bullocks, the Government breaks the "seventy-five" with a "drink" sent out in tanks on one of the telegraph station waggons. The stage thus broken into "a thirty-five-mile dry," with another of forty on top of that, becomes complicated to giddiness in its backings, and fillings, and goings, and comings, ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... pinch of snuff, leaving the study door open, and calling out the last words of his sentence as he went. Indoors he sometimes used an oak stick like a little alpenstock, and this was a sign that he felt giddiness. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... the Mission folk Out of their rosy dream awoke. Some of them looked a trifle white; But that, no doubt, was from earthquake fright. Three days: there was sore distress, Headache, nausea, giddiness. Four days: faintings, tenderness Of the mouth and fauces; and in less Than one week,—here the story closes; We won't continue the prognosis,— Enough that now no trace is seen Of Spring or Mission ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte

... Giddiness prevails below stairs too. The very tall young man whose excitement came on so soon, appears to have his head glued to the table in the pantry, and cannot be detached from—it. A violent revulsion has taken place in the spirits of Mrs ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... become used to a little home which was unstable, and sometimes delirious, and a sky that was always falling, and an earth that rose to meet the collapse. Here we were on a dead level, still and silent, with the men whispering, and one felt inclined to reel with giddiness. We were fixed to a dumb, unseen river of a world ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson

... In her giddiness they seemed to be moving in a wide, empty space among many fires, nor had she an idea which was the real one. His ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... last, to his infinite delight, Jasper heard her answer very weakly, 'I 'm here, Jasper; but I 'm nigh to slipping. It's my head, Jasper, and the giddiness that is over me. Good-night, good-night, Jasper dear; ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade

... commander-in-chief. I had but fairly started, when I was struck on the right side by a piece of a shell almost spent, which yet came near ending my earthly career. My first feeling after the shock was one of giddiness and blindness, then of partial recovery, then of deathly sickness. I succeeded in getting off rather than falling from my horse, near the root of a tree, where I fainted and lay insensible for nearly an hour. At length, I recovered so far as to be able ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson

... the nesting season approaches, both birds make curious acrobatic flights above the tree-tops; then, after a short sail in midair, they return to their perch. This appears to be their only giddiness and frivolity, unless a dust-bath in the country road might be considered ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... as improbable that Balthasar should have been led by his wild moody whims to design his blooming foster-daughter for the wife of the gloomy Eleazar. A shudder came over him to think with what dark and perplext spirits he was so closely linkt; his head went round with the giddiness of all about him, and he seemed almost to lose his hold on himself. This made him still more regret the loss of young William: at the same time his annoyances were increast by the robberies of the warehouse, which instead of ceasing were carried on with more audacity than ever. ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... the old woman, who had been kneeling before the image, replied, "Monipodio, my son, I am not in the humour to keep festival this morning, for during the last two days I have had a giddiness and pain in my head, that go near to make me mad; I must, besides, be at our Lady of the Waters before mid-day strikes, having to accomplish my devotions and offer my candles there, as well as at the crucifix of St. Augustin; for I would not fail to do either, even though it were ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra



Words linked to "Giddiness" :   lightheadedness, lightsomeness, symptom, silliness, dizziness, lightness, frivolousness, frivolity, giddy, vertigo



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