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Giddy   Listen
adjective
Giddy  adj.  (compar. giddier; superl. giddiest)  
1.
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. "By giddy head and staggering legs betrayed."
2.
Promoting or inducing giddiness; as, a giddy height; a giddy precipice. "Upon the giddy footing of the hatches."
3.
Bewildering on account of rapid turning; running round with celerity; gyratory; whirling. "The giddy motion of the whirling mill."
4.
Characterized by inconstancy; unstable; changeable; fickle; wild; thoughtless; heedless. "Giddy, foolish hours." "Giddy chance." "Young heads are giddy and young hearts are warm."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Giddy" Quotes from Famous Books



... your little heart. There's Miss Tyler in the village, two mile off—but I don't think much of her. She's too giddy and smart, and the way she carries on with Dan Somers is the talk of the place! Are ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre

... me giddy youth, When I kidded meself a treat, I'd have pass him one ez a gooey. 'Strewth On the track iv Huns, he's a eight-day sleuth, 'N' at tearin' into 'em nail 'n' tooth He's got ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson

... Aloft, at giddy mastheads oscillating above the decks of ships, I have gazed on sun-flashed water where coral-growths iridesced from profounds of turquoise deeps, and conned the ships into the safety of mirrored ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... called it, in its salad days, than to my intercourse with Minna Planer, who was employed in that magic trifle as the Amorous Fairy. Indeed, in the midst of this dust-cloud of frivolity and vulgarity, she always seemed very much like a fairy, the reasons of whose descent into this giddy whirl, which of a truth seemed neither to carry her away nor even to affect her, remained an absolute mystery. For while I could discover nothing in the opera singers save the familiar stage caricatures ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... was aroused. She herself was in a higher class than her sister, but she was greatly interested in Frances's success. For Frances was rather a giddy little person. Till the companionship and emulation at school had roused her, she had never bestowed more attention on her lessons than was ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth

... Jesus went to work to lay hold of this giddy woman! He spoke of what to a native of the East must have been a surprise, and a delightful idea. He goes on to tell of being delivered from that plague of those hot climates, thirst, and excites her wonder by speaking of a well of water ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness

... ages required for such slow changes as to grasp the great gulfs of space that separate us from the stars. We can only do it by comparison. You know what a second is, and how the seconds race past without ceasing day and night. It makes one giddy to picture the seconds there are in a year; yet if each one of those seconds was a year in itself, what then? That seems a stupendous time, but it is nothing compared with the time needed to form a nebula into a planetary system. If we had five thousand of such years, with every ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton

... so dizzy holding my head down, that I was obliged to raise it. I was so giddy and confused that I came very near rolling off the top of the bay window; and in my efforts to save myself, I made a noise, which disturbed the conference. Tom and my uncle were alarmed. I heard them rush out of the room. Without waiting to ascertain their intentions, I put on my shoes, and climbed ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic

... "that's no name fer it," and she fervently kissed Randy's cheek. "I must say, ef ye'd stayed away a week longer yer ma an' me would been 'bout ready ter give up housekeepin'. I tell ye, Randy, we shall all feel nigh on ter giddy, ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks

... airship which they had destroyed, and a feeling of exultation took possession of the lad. They were going to win through—they would do it yet; it was written that they were to get free, and he closed his eyes, giddy with the whirl of mingled emotions that ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry

... A giddy youth, who had resigned his fellowship at Oxford, brought his fortune to Bath, and, without the smallest skill, won a considerable sum; and following it up, in the next October added four thousand ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... plains or terraces the valley itself has been hollowed out. Although we know that there are tides which run within the Narrows of the Strait of Magellan at the rate of eight knots an hour, yet we must confess that it makes the head almost giddy to reflect on the number of years, century after century, which the tides, unaided by a heavy surf, must have required to have corroded so vast an area and thickness of solid basaltic lava. Nevertheless, we must believe that the strata undermined by the waters ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... hemlock, Dick Travers placed his fiddle and struck into a giddy, tuneful thing as picturesque as the time and occasion. With head bent to one side and eyes and lips smiling, Priscilla listened until something within her caught and responded to the tripping notes. At first she went cautiously, feeling her way after ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock

... was giddy, and his head swam. Surely, among other things in the half-indistinct nightmare of the preceding evening, he must have had ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn

... said Maitre Pierre. "Did I not desire that Dame Perette should bring what I wanted? But I blame thee not, thou art too young to be—what thou must be one day—a false and treacherous thing, like the rest of thy giddy sex. Here is a Scottish cavalier will ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... present themselves at every turn. Have you ever asked yourself why some people faint at the sight of blood, or why most of us turn giddy when we look down from ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks

... ill-past hours return again! No more, as then, should Sloth around me throw Her soul-enslaving, leaden chain! No more the precious time would I employ In giddy revels, or in thoughtless joy, 5 A present joy producing ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... "the Captain is right when he observes that we must not part company. As my mother says, we are a giddy crew, and will be the better of a little scientific ballast to keep us from capsizing into a crevasse. Do come, my dear sir, if it were only out of charity, ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... sprung upon me, and caught me by the arms, and shook me in a grip so strong that, giddy as I was, I reeled and staggered like a drunken man. And still her voice hissed: "What do you mean?" And her voice and hands ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... red, envelops all, so that it is impossible to distinguish more than the outlines of immense walls; the wind brings, in heavy gusts, a deadly odour—of burnt flesh, perhaps—which turns the heart sick and the brain giddy. On the other side the Tuileries, the Legion d'Honneur, the Ministere de la Guerre, and the Ministere des Finances are flaming still, like five great craters of a gigantic volcano! It is the eruption of Paris! Alone, a great black mass detaches itself from the universal conflagration, it is the ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... heartless, so cruelly false, and she was so perfectly defenseless! A wave of burning color swept over her face. If she could but have gone away have hidden herself from those cruel eyes. But her knees trembled so fearfully that, had she tried to move, she must have fallen. Sick and giddy, the flights of steps looked to her like a precipice. She could only lean for support against the gray-stone moldings of the door way, while tears, which for once she could not restrain, rushed to her eyes. Oh! If Tom or the professor, or some one ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... some smooth hard surface like glass. This was so unexpected that it startled him extremely. Quite suddenly he rolled over, stared for a moment, and struggled into a sitting position. The effort was unexpectedly difficult, and it left him giddy and ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells

... she keep near you, you giddy creature?' said Mme. Lasalle. 'Hazel' (whispering), 'Stuart bade me engage you to lead the German with him. May I tell ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... answer. "I want to get all my old stock off hands. Sugar water comes next, and then the giddy sassafras and spring roots rush me, and after that, harvest begins full force, and all my land is teeming. This is going to be a big year. Everything is sufficiently advanced to be worth while. I have decided to enlarge ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... tunnels, and the golden seas of corn-harvest. He was alone; and he leaned his head on his hands, and thought, and thought, and thought, till the rocking, and the rushing, and the whirl, and the noise of the steam on his ear and the giddy gyrations of his brain in the exhaustion of overstrung exertion, conquered thought. With the beating of the engine seeming to throb like the great swinging of a pendulum through his mind, and the whirling of the country passing by him like a confused phantasmagoria, his eyes closed, his aching ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... flatterer! Nor charge his gen'rous meaning with a weakness, Which his great soul and virtue must disdain. Too much of love thy hapless friend has prov'd, Too many giddy, foolish, hours are gone, And in fantastic measures danc'd away: May the remaining few know only friendship. So thou, my dearest, truest, best, Alicia, Vouchsafe to lodge me in thy gentle heart, A partner there, I will give up mankind, Forget ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe

... car," we tore through scenery so diversified that it might have been chosen from the finest bits of a whole continent. There were wooded ravines tapestried with pink sweetbrier; there were far hill-towns like flocks of gulls resting on the edge of giddy precipices; there were strange old fortresses; ruined Moorish castles; velvet-green fields with aloe hedges grey as lines of broken slate; dark, noble gorges sprinkled with mother-o'-pearl flakes of white wild roses, that drifted down the red rock into water green ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... to ask for her hand and heart—to ask her to be his—an officer's wife? There lay before her fancy a glittering expanse of earlier dreams that almost made her giddy; and the whole week she was absent and pale, thinking anxiously of Sunday, when he was to return. What would he ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie

... profitable thing, he is already deeply dishonest. To a mind so tainted, will flock stories of consummate craft, of effective knavery, of fraud covered by its brilliant success. At times, the mind shrinks from its own thoughts, and trembles to look down the giddy cliff on whose edge they poise, or over which they fling themselves like sporting sea-birds. But these imaginations will not be driven from the heart where they have once nested. They haunt a man's business, visit him in dreams, and vampire-like, fan the slumbers ...
— Twelve Causes of Dishonesty • Henry Ward Beecher

... and paternal pride, as Sarah Brown tried to find a place on which the python would like to be tickled or scratched. Somehow the python has a barren figure, from a caresser's point of view. The ferryman went on: "There is something about the grip and spring in a snake's body that makes me feel giddy with pleasure. Snakes to me, you know, are just a drug, sold by the yard instead of in bottles. My brain is getting every day colder and quieter, and ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson

... with the invariable seriousness of his manner, led many persons to believe him melancholy, and even disposed to suicide. He did, indeed, confess to me, that he sometimes felt giddy on the edge of a precipice. This was his nearest approach, I am confident, to the idea of self-destruction. While we were examining the great iron furnaces of Salisbury, he told me that he was afraid of walking near the throat of a chimney when in blast, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... natives were now heard, and soon afterwards some were seen on either side of the strait, hallooing and waving their arms. We were so near to one party that they might have thrown their spears on board. BY this time we were flying past the shore with such velocity that it made us quite giddy; and our situation was too awful to give us time to observe the motions of the Indians; for we were entering the narrowest part of the strait, and the next moment were close to the rock, which it appeared almost impossible to avoid, and it was more than probable ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... like a pollarded tree—all the lower branches are gone—one gazes on great nobilities, on the fascinating horror of Eternity sometimes—I said horror, but it's often fine in its spaciousness—one gazes on many inverted splendours of Titans, but it's giddy work being so high and rarefied, and all the gentle past seems gone. That's why it is pleasant in this grimy anonymity of death and courage to get reminders, such as your letter, that one was once localised and had a familiar history. ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson

... interior nor exterior inspire you with the feelings of awe common to other large churches. The sun struggles through the immense windows of painted glass, staining every pillar and carved cornice with the richest hues, and wherever the eye wanders it grows giddy with the wilderness of architecture. The people on their knees are like paintings in the strong, artificial light; the chequered pavement seems trembling with a quivering radiance; the altar is far and indistinct; and the lamps burning over the tomb of St. Carlo ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... servants' staircase, but found that she was pursued, and as she turned a corner on the landing the concierge seized her. As soon as he recognized her, he said: "Oh! is it you? excuse me; don't be frightened! What a giddy creature you are! It surprises you to see me up so early, eh? It's on account of the thieving that's going on these days in the cook's bedroom on the second. Good-night to you! it's lucky for you I ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... from the infernal rivers stole Hell-drafts for man, too much tormented him; With nerves unstrung, but steadfast of his soul, He stood upon the salient current's brim; His head was giddy, and his sight was dim; And then he knew this leap would be his last— Saw air, and earth, and water, wildly swim, With eyes of many multitudes, dense and vast, That stared in mockery; none a ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... him and hurled him to one side. Now every one ran for aid, and the giddy young people cursed the fact that their machine was so well known; they feared that assistance here would be dangerous. But not a soul said a cross word to them. So they knelt beside the injured white-bearded victim, wiped the blood from his ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... with which to shade about their dreamy-looking eyes. Ladies belonging to the aristocratic class are rarely, if ever, seen walking in the streets. They only drive in the paseo. For a couple of hours in the closing part of the day, the paseo is a bright, giddy, alluring scene. A military band performs on Sundays, adding life and spirit to the surroundings. The wholesome influence of these out-of-door concerts upon the masses of the people is doubtless fully realized ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou

... fluttered like a wounded bird, dropping, darting upward, and careering to one side. John was sick to his soul, both physically and mentally. His head became giddy and the wind roared in his ears, but the exchange of seats was at ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler

... he murmured, drawing a big breath, "I wonder if I did it! I don't feel as if I had—something outside me—" He stopped; he felt as if Christian herself were there; he felt as if her arms were round him, his head upon her bosom. He was giddy with emotion. Scarcely knowing what he did he walked across the room, and stared out of the window, looking across his own woods to the woods ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... felt giddy, and recoiling in alarm to the middle of the platform, I hastily descended down the path which ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian

... first time in her life Anielka rode in a carriage. Her head turned quite giddy, she could not look at the trees and fields as they flew past her; but by degrees she became more accustomed to it, and the fresh air enlivening her spirits, she performed the rest of the journey in a tolerably ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various

... dear. If you were not it would not be well for you to do as you are going to do. If you were giddy and harum-scarum, and devoted to rank and wealth and that sort of thing, it would not be well for you to marry a commoner without fortune. I'm sure Mr Crosbie will excuse me for saying so ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... seated at the long table, bottle and mug in hand, and the gloomy place was poorly lighted by a swinging whale-oil lamp. Jack Cockrell crept unnoticed into a corner and was giddy and almost helpless with nausea. It seemed ages before Captain Wellsby's legs appeared in the hatchway and he came down into the cabin, bringing a shower of spray with him. His kindly face was haggard and sad and he tottered from sheer weariness. Passing ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... vicissitudes of traffic are passing swift in these latter days; and it does not lie beyond the reach of a possible future that the great commercial capitals of the Atlantic coast may be called to pause in their giddy race, even before they have rebuilded the Quarantine Hospital, or laid the capstone of the pharos ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... sheets of sullen vapour rolling over it in autumn; what breathless heats, and rainclouds big with thunder; what silences; what unimpeded blasts of winter winds! One old monk tends this deserted spot. He has the huge church, with its echoing aisles and marble columns and giddy bell-tower and cloistered corridors, all to himself. At rare intervals, priests from Ravenna come to sing some special mass at these cold altars; pious folk make vows to pray upon their mouldy steps and kiss the relics which are shown on great occasions. But no one stays; they hurry, after muttering ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... up a tree, On terra-firma, or afloat, To mount the giddy topmast, he Would doff awhile ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... again Rua saw, in the trenchant edge of the sky, The giddy conjuring done. And then, in the blink of an eye, A scream caught in with the breath, a whirling packet of limbs, A lump that dived in the gulph, more swift than a dolphin swims; And there was the lump ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson

... observed. I suppose it's the primitive instinct of the hunter which still lurks in him and makes him desire to stalk down his quarry instead of its stalking him. Gladys didn't seem aware of this supreme fact, and (though she affected the giddy airs of eighteen) she was getting perilously near the age when the country considers a woman is wise and staid enough to vote, ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick

... shafts of the pines on Devil's slopes, only to miss the sedate repose and infinite calm that used to environ them. In the feverish, pulsating life of the young metropolis they often stopped oppressed, giddy, and choking; the roar of the streets and thoroughfares was meaningless to them, except to revive strange memories of the deep, unvarying monotone of the evening wind over their humbler roof on the Sierran hillside. Civic bred and nurtured as they were, the recurrence of these sensations perplexed ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte

... great many fine shops and fine houses, Letty keeping close behind her. Letty's head felt quite giddy, and she was very faint, for her naughty father had gone off, and poor Letty had had ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... undertakings. "The book," he writes of the Chimes, "has made my face white in a foreign land. My cheeks, which were beginning to fill out, have sunk again; my eyes have grown immensely large; my hair is very lank, and the head inside the hair is hot and giddy. Read the scene at the end of the third part twice. I wouldn't write it twice for something.... Since I conceived, at the beginning of the second part, what must happen in the third, I have undergone ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... dancers were girls from the theaters. As soon as we entered I plunged into the giddy whirl of the waltz. That delightful exercise has always been dear to me; I know of nothing more beautiful, more worthy of a beautiful woman and a young man; all dances compared with the waltz are ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... domestic angel," the "gentle and refining influence" sort of thing. Now these sedentary fireside tabby-cats of Norway have been trained, they say, by the snow-shoes into lithe and audacious creatures, for whom no night is too dark or height too giddy, and who are not only saying good-bye to the traditional feminine pallor and delicacy of constitution, but actually taking the lead in every educational and social reform. I cannot but think that the tennis and tramping ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent

... fruit-trees intermingled with plots of barley already in the ear. This rich front was backed by the wall of dark limestone cliffs two miles distant, 3000 feet elevation, with the castles of Buffavento and St. Hilarion perched left and right on the giddy summits of the highest crags, which in the clear atmosphere apparently overhung our position. We then breakfasted, took leave of our hospitable host, and rode back to Lefkosia to inquire into ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... Then let me give you some good advice. When you're in love, don't believe all you think, or half you feel, or anything at all you are perfectly sure of. It's dangerous business. But I am afraid that you're askin' me because it makes you think that you are young and giddy, like the rest of the village boys, to be proposin' to a shy young ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott

... the restaurant windows to blaze with delight and the streets to be filled with long lines of belated carriages. That holiday uproar, of which the poor Nabob had been so fond and which was well adapted to the giddy whirl of his existence, aroused him for a second. His lips moved, and his staring eyes, turned toward de Gery, assumed in presence of death a sorrowful, imploring, rebellious expression, as if to call upon him to bear witness to one of the greatest, the most cruel acts of injustice ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... staple, and Norway to-day has more than one establishment which turns out canned whale. Newfoundlanders find whale-meat a welcome change from cod perpetual, and I have seen the Indians of Cape Flattery eat it when it hailed you a mile to windward and had more than begun to twine like a giddy honeysuckle. Now, enterprising people are talking of canning whales' milk, a dense yellow fluid like soft tallow. When the milk-maid goes out to milk a whale she must take half a dozen barrels along as milking pails. The Eskimo like it. Soon the soda-fountains on Fort Macpherson and Herschel Island ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... raise herself up, but loss of blood had made her giddy, and Dominic put his arm round her and steadied her roughly, but not unkindly. Her dark head rested a second against his blue jerseyed shoulder, and once more she lifted her eyes to his. With brusque and evidently totally unpremeditated passion he ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin

... Sybil's temple, and therefore left it to join my companions, who had gone down into the glen to see the great cascade. The Anio bursts out of a cavern in the mountain-side, and like a prisoner giddy with recovered liberty, reels over the edge of a precipice more than two hundred feet deep. The bottom is hid in a cloud of boiling spray, that shifts from side to side, and driven by the wind, sweeps whistling down the narrow pass. It ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor

... committed to the world as a religious man. Many who had never seen aught of him but his productions, and had formed the loftiest estimate of his personal character from the pure tendency of his effusions, were astonished and grieved when introduced to the author.—His head made giddy by the praises of young and old, he forgot himself, and possessing most shrewd good sense, he would talk the reverse. He became fantastic in apparel, as he did likewise in his style of writing; made himself too common, and almost broke a pious father's heart by deserting the altar ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks

... reception. At a spot where three roads diverged, he did not know which one he ought to take, and desired Brother Masse, who was his companion, to turn round and round, no doubt to put his obedience to the test. When he began to be giddy, he ordered him to stop, and to follow the road which was before him. Masse went first, and said to himself, "How uncivil! how simple! He not only has not taken leave of the bishop who received him with so much kindness, but he ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... seeking To plant the weeds, or flowers, of thy own land. He wills not of these pranking gaudy blossoms Upon this soil. And I too must acknowledge I feel as if they had a sour-sweet odour, That makes me giddy—that half suffocates. Thy head is wont to bear it. I don't blame Those stronger nerves that can support it. Mine - Mine it behoves not. Latterly thy angel Had made me half a fool. I am ashamed, Whene'er I see my ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

... her. "I'll be ready in a minute." He took off his coat and turned his khaki shirt in at the throat, so that you saw the white line of his untanned chest in strange contrast to his sun-burned throat. A feeling of giddy faintness surged over Tessie. She stepped blindly into the boat and would have fallen if Chuck's hard, firm grip had not steadied her. "Whoa, there! Don't you know how to step into a boat? ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber

... said Amrei. And now they stopped, for her partner probably felt that she was becoming giddy ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... heads to the low Gothic arch, and stood within the tower. It was thick darkness there. But far above, the bells began again to clash and jangle confusedly, with volleys of demonic joy. Successive flights of ladders, each ending in a giddy platform hung across the gloom, climb to the height of some hundred and fifty feet; and all their rungs were crusted with frozen snow, deposited by trampling boots. For up and down these stairs, ascending and descending, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... it for a more illogical and selfish affection, but he reflected that he had married this religious girl for the security of an affection which he felt was not subject to the temptations of the world—or even its own weakness—as was too often the case with the giddy maidens whom he had known through Demorest's companionship. It was, therefore, more with a sense of recalling this distinctive quality of his wife than any loyalty to Demorest that he suddenly resolved to confide to her the ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte

... be anything serious in Mr. Brooke's devotion. Time would probably have proved the correctness of this supposition, had it not been, fortunately for Nelly, that she had a father with more steadiness of mind than her giddy brain was capable of. Mr. Curtis succeeded in turning the rapid attachment to such advantage, that in three weeks from the time of their first meeting they were not only engaged, but ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... sunstroke becomes giddy, sick at the stomach, and weak. He then gets drowsy and may seem as if asleep, but he cannot be aroused. The skin is hot and dry instead of being cold and pale, as in fainting. The doctor should be ...
— Health Lessons - Book 1 • Alvin Davison

... there lived and flourished two Generals; and as both were giddy-pated, by jesting command, at my desire, they were speedily transported to ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood

... invitation which was accepted, the two artists taking the meal together at the Cafe Riche. The third waltz (in F major; Vivace) shows a character very different from the preceding one. What a stretching of muscles! What a whirling! Mark the giddy motions of the melody beginning at bar seventeen! Of this waltz of Chopin's and the first it is more especially true what Schumann said of all three: "Such flooding life moves within these waltzes that they seem to have ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... Bands Travell'd into distant Lands; Others slunk to moor and wood, Far from human neighbourhood, And, among the Kinds that keep With us closer fellowship, 60 With us openly abide, All have laid their mirth aside, —Where is he that giddy Sprite, Blue-cap, with his colours bright, Who was blest as bird could be, Feeding in the apple-tree, Made such wanton spoil and rout, Turning blossoms inside out, Hung with head towards the ground, Flutter'd, perch'd; into a round ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth

... "She is such a giddy thing," said Mrs. Price, turning her soft eyes on poor Arthur Wilkinson. "Oh, laws! I know I shall be drowned. Do hold me." And Arthur Wilkinson did hold her, and nearly carried her up into the ship. As he did so, his mind would fly off to Adela Gauntlet; but his arms and legs were not ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... sheen of beauty's cheek, Nor feel the heart can never all grow old? Who can contemplate fame through clouds unfold The star which rises o'er her steep, nor climb? Harold, once more within the vortex rolled On with the giddy circle, chasing Time, Yet with a nobler aim than in his ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron

... century, a man of the first quality made it his constant practice to pass his time without shaking his arm at a gaming-table, associating with jockeys at Newmarket, or murdering time by a constant round of giddy dissipation, if not of criminal indulgence. Diaries were not uncommon in the last age: Lord Anglesea, who made so great a figure in the reign of Charles the Second, left one behind him; and one said to have been written by the Duke of Shrewsbury ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... for instance this, on The Dowie Dens of Yarrow: "The editor found it easy to collect a variety of copies; but very difficult indeed to select from them such a collated edition as might in any degree suit the taste of 'these more light and giddy-paced times.'" Notes on some others of the ballads say that "a few conjectural emendations have been found necessary," but no one of these remarks would seem really ingenuous in a modern scholar when we consider how far the "conjectural emendations" extended. ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball

... are of value to the priest, my friend. You have had the good fortune to meet one here, and instead of profiting by it, of thinking yourself fortunate, of thanking heaven and piously and devoutly enjoying the good which God grants you, you cast it away, you disdain, you despise it; and why? For some giddy little thing who will bring upon you every kind of vexation and unpleasantness. ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... other friends—I dislike them, Philip, and what is the good of pretending friendship for people you don't care a button about? There is not a woman in the place that can hold a candle to Giddy." ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham

... and giddy, and there was something at the back of his mind that he knew would make him feel sicker and giddier as soon as he should have the sense to remember what it was. Meantime it was important to think of proper words to soothe the City man that had once been Jimmy to keep him quiet till Time, ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit

... of his leading actresses. About this time also Raoul was on terms of intimacy with Emile Blondet, who wrote him a letter dated from Aigues (Bourgogne) in which he described the Montcornets, and related their local difficulties. Raoul Nathan, a member of all the giddy and dissipated social circles, was with Giroudeau, Finot and Bixiou, a witness of Philip Bridau's wedding to Madame J.-J. Rouget. He visited Florentine Cabirolle, when the Marests and Oscar Husson were there, and appeared often on the rue Saint-Georges, at the home of Esther van Gobseck, ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... write whore, Though not upon my forehead, in my conscience, To be read hourly, and yet name your honour? Yours suffers but in circumstance; mine in substance. If you obey me, you part with some credit, From whom? the giddy multitude; but mankind Will censure me, ...
— The Little French Lawyer - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont

... those blacks there The emblemes of her honour lost; all joy That leads a Virgin to receive her lover, Keep from this place, all fellow-maids that bless her, And blushing do unloose her Zone, keep from her: No merry noise nor lusty songs be heard here, Nor full cups crown'd with wine make the rooms giddy, This is no masque of mirth, but murdered honour. Sing mournfully that sad Epithalamion I gave thee now: and prethee ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... creek or back again to the barnyard. The thickets are alive with red birds and ground robins and an occasional squirrel, who has come down the mountain for a drink, rustles the leaves in his flight or at giddy heighth barks defiance ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... to prepare carefully against shock at her appearance by buying a rather giddy hat and coat to offset her short hair and thin body. Cameron had insisted, at the last, that she reserve her cash for emergencies and repay ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... accomplished, all revelations confirmed. Man is constant in nought but inconsistency. He is directed to take pattern from the industrious bee, and lay up the sweet treasures which have been prepared for his use; but he prefers the giddy flight of the butterfly, pursuing his idle career from flower to flower, until, fatigued with the rapidity of his motions, he reposes for a time, and revolves in his mind where he shall bend his devious way in search of ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... better feelings and his conscience had been awakened by the first touch of weariness. His brief infatuation had run its course. His judgment had been whirled—he told himself it had been whirled, but it had really only been tweaked—from its centre, had performed its giddy orbit, and now the check-string had brought it back to the point from whence it had set out, namely, that she was ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley

... seven men were clinging, holding on by tufts of lichen, and giddy and terrified in the extreme, was rushing down the declivity with the swiftness of an express, at the rate of fifty miles an hour. Not a cry was possible, nor an attempt to get off or stop. They could not ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... words the young folk tried to stop, but their feet must needs go on to the endless music. Faster and faster in giddy round they went, day and night, rain and shine, throughout the changing seasons, until the last hours of the extra day, when they fell in a senseless heap in the hollow worn by their unresting feet. When they awoke to consciousness all reason had passed from them. To ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... a cocoa factory one becomes almost hypnotised by a hundred of these circular mill-stones that rotate incessantly day and night. In Messrs. Fry's factory the "giddy motion of the whirling mill" is very much increased by a number of magnificent horizontal driving wheels, each some 20 feet in diameter, which form, as it were, a revolving ceiling to the room. Your fascinated gaze beholds "two or three vast circles, ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp

... the giddy round of prosperous years, The birth of new affections, and the joys That cluster round earth's favorites, there walked Still at her side, the image ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey

... him to travel. He walked on, therefore, in such a state of misery as can scarcely be conceived, much less described. His head ached excessively, an intense pain shot like death-pangs through his lower back and loins, his face was flushed, and his head giddy. In this state he proceeded, without money or friends; without a house to shelter him, or a bed on which to lie, far from his own relations, and with the prospect of death, under circumstances peculiarly dreadful, before him! He tottered on, however, ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... giddy, and lay at full length for a great while, clutching the two edges of the path with both hands, and staring at the ground I was lying on with wide-open eyes. When that passed I felt like a different ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay

... what Doc meant when he spoke of their having "a bracing ride in more senses than one;" for the motion of the wagon was a giddy series of jolts and bounces, with just sufficient interval between each shock for them to brace themselves, with stiffened backbones, for the next upheaval. They had already begun, as Royal said, "to have kinks in all their limbs," when Lin ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook

... came from out of the darkness. "Who is it—you, Frank? Don't play the fool with a fellow. It makes me so jolly giddy, and ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn

... turn is so natural either way, that you have made me almost giddy with it." "Dear sir," said he, grasping me by the hand, "you have a great deal of patience; but pray what do you think of the ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele

... moment, to the strains of a giddy, languishing waltz, a couple whirled into the small salon. They were Risler's bride and his partner, Georges Fromont. Equally young and attractive, they were talking in undertones, confining their words within the narrow ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... Oswald was looking Dicky was pulling at his jacket to make him get down and let Dicky have a squint. And just as she said 'I almost,' Dicky pulled too hard and Oswald felt himself toppling on the giddy verge of the big flower-pots. Putting forth all his strength our hero strove to recover his equi-what's-its-name, but it was now lost ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit

... again changed, and the whole mass of vapour, smoke, and ashes came sweeping like the very besom of destruction towards the giddy ledge on which the observers stood. Nigel was so entranced that it is probable he might have been caught in the horrible tempest and lost, had not his cooler companion grasped his arm and dragged him violently into the passage—where they were safe, though half suffocated by the ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne

... estimation upon a level with the most abandoned of her sex and courts the same regard. Strong language, perhaps you think, but I tell you it is gospel truth, and I feel like going into orders and preaching from a pulpit whenever I see a thoughtless, gay and giddy girl tiptoeing her way upon the road that leads direct to destruction. The boat that dances like a feather on the current a mile above Niagara's plunge is just as much lost as when it enters the swirling, swinging ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden

... are giddy," said Lucia, "your fate will be sealed; and, if you are to stay here, it really will be better to try to ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... obeyed. "Won't do," said he. "You wants keeping up to the mark," and retired, and came back with an enormous glass of port. When the sitting was finished, I went back to bed at the "Sauvage," very giddy and ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen

... and swifter, too. On the last day, or night, of their journey—though they did not know that it was to be their last—it swirled so fiercely that it threatened every moment to overset their beetle-shells. Suddenly Tommy began to feel giddy. He gripped the side of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... derry on this stror 'at coot First time I seen 'im dodgin' round Doreen. 'Im, wiv 'is giddy tie an' Yankee soot, Ferever yappin' like a tork-machine About "The Hoffis" where 'e 'ad a grip.... The way 'e smiled at 'er give me ...
— The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke • C. J. Dennis

... attention from him. He danced several times, but it was with those who seemed to be neglected by others. In his quiet, dignified bearing, in his unselfish affability toward those who otherwise would have had a dull evening, he appeared to her in most favorable contrast to the giddy young fellows who fluttered around her, and whose supreme thoughts were always of themselves, and of her only as she could minister to ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... a partner. He keeps perfect time; he never gets tired; he won't kick you or tread on your dress; he will hold you as firmly as you like, and go as quickly or as slowly as you please; he never gets giddy; and he is full of conversation. Come, speak up for ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... retrieved, as he could fancy that I had an ear by nature.' Well—but I am pleased that you should praise me—right or wrong—I mean, whether I am right or wrong in being pleased! and I say so to you openly, although my belief is that you are under a vow to our Lady of Loretto to make giddy with all manner of high vanities, some head, ... not too strong for such things, but too low for them, ... before you see again the embroidery on her divine petticoat. Only there's a flattery so far beyond praise ... even your praise—as ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... few minutes that in which the German Chancellor, giddy at the sight of the abyss into which Germany was falling, uttered these celebrated words: "Just for a word, NEUTRALITY, a word which in war times has been so often disregarded; just for A SCRAP OF PAPER, Great Britain is going to make war on a kindred ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times

... deck and seized by the groups of seamen detailed for the purpose; while the rigging shook under the quick steps of the alert topmen springing up the ratlines, swarming over the tops, and laying out on the yards, without a thought of the giddy elevation, in their intense rivalry each to ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... eyes and an ugly look on his face, and a little red ridge that I had not noticed before seemed to burn itself across his forehead. "And anyway, you don't want me, eh? Well, I'm going. I'm not going to have my wife chasing all over the country with strange men. Remember, you're not the giddy grass widdy you used to be. You can take me, or ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... didn't think it any harm, till I came and sat down by you on the little stool last night. But when I knew, by what was written in your face, that you had seen me walking in the gallery with Edward, and when I knew what you thought, I felt how giddy and how wrong it was. But oh, dear John, how could you, could you ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens

... about all their outlines—a perpetual resemblance to living features, distorted and scornful. Myriads of deceitful shadows, and lurid lights, played and floated about and through the pale-blue pinnacles, dazzling and confusing the sight of the traveller; while his ears grew dull and his head giddy with the constant gush and roar of the concealed waters. These painful circumstances increased upon him as he advanced; the ice crashed and yawned into fresh chasms at his feet, tottering spires nodded around him, and fell thundering across his path; and, though he ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... was out of the question. He must staunch the blood of the much-offending member, and being rather giddy for the moment, sat down to ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale

... the retreat of the Templars, Rebecca saw and heard nothing—she was locked in the arms of her aged father, giddy, and almost senseless, with the rapid change of circumstances around her. But one word from Isaac at ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... Generation after generation takes to itself the Form of a Body; and forth issuing from Cimmerian Night, on Heaven's mission APPEARS. What Force and Fire is in each he expends: one grinding in the mill of Industry; one hunter-like climbing the giddy Alpine heights of Science; one madly dashed in pieces on the rocks of Strife, in war with his fellow:—and then the Heaven-sent is recalled; his earthly Vesture falls away, and soon even to Sense becomes a vanished Shadow. Thus, like some wild-flaming, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... thee in every bookshop, thee in holy fane of highmost Jove. In promenade yclept "The Great," the crowd of cocottes straightway did I stop, O friend, accosting those whose looks I noted were unruffled. And for thee loudly did I clamour, "Restore to me Camerius, most giddy girls." Quoth such-an-one, her bosom bare a-shewing, "Look! 'twixt rose-red paps he shelters him." But labour 'tis of Hercules thee now to find. Not were I framed the Cretan guard, nor did I move with Pegasean wing, ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... country see her laws o'erturned By those who should protect them: Sir, no prince Shall ruin Spain; and, least of all, her own. Is any just or glorious act in view, Your oaths forbid it: is your avarice, Or, if there be such, any viler passion, To have its giddy range, and to be gorged, It rises over all your sacraments, A hooded mystery, holier than ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor

... made by the unfortunate youth was momentary. Faint from the blood he had lost, and giddy from the excitement of his feelings, he sank back exhausted on his pillow, and wept like ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... he interjected, crossing to the bowed form, and taking one of Janice's hands consolingly, "the lass has been giddy, but 't is an ill wind, truly, for through it we have one fine bird secured yonder, to say nothing of an even bigger prize in prospect. Cry a truce, therefore, and let the ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... coming, when carriages were actually to "travel without horses," the goods train was simply a long line or cavalcade of Pack-horses. This was before the age of "fly waggons," distinguished for carrying goods, and sometimes passengers as well, at the giddy rate of two miles an hour under favourable circumstances! Fine strapping broad-chested Lincolnshire animals were these Pack-horses, bearing on either side their bursting packs of merchandise to the weight of half-a-ton. Twelve or fourteen in a line, they would ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston

... bring him back, I would freely give it to his enemies, And think I gain'd, having bought so dear a friend. Q. Isab. Hark, how he harps upon his minion! K. Edw. My heart is as an anvil unto sorrow, Which beats upon it like the Cyclops' hammers, And with the noise turns up my giddy brain, And makes me frantic for my Gaveston. Ah, had some bloodless Fury rose from hell, And with my kingly sceptre struck me dead, When I was forc'd to leave my Gaveston! Lan. Diablo, what passions call you these? Q. Isab. My gracious lord, I come to bring you news. K. Edw. That you ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe

... redemption! I pursue a fier Which like the giddy Meteors that seduce With their false light benighted travellers Allures me to distruction. To curse fate Were to allow I feard it, and admit Participation in me of that spiritt I ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various

... drawing-room, in order to see the effect of the numerous wax-lights in the superb chandeliers of rock crystal. The great folding-doors resisted all her efforts to open them. "Who is there?" cried a loud, threatening voice. Trembling and with beating heart Wilhelmine leaned against the door, giddy with fear, when a second demand, "Who is there? The watchword! No one can pass without the countersign!" roused her, and she stole back on tiptoe to her room. "He has kept his word, the doors are guarded!" she whispered. "I will go and await him in my sitting-room." She stepped quickly ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach

... with astonishment at the gorgeous stuffs and furs, the gold and color, the glow of fire and gleam of jewels; she breathed in amazement the subtly perfumed air which seemed at first to make her feel giddy, her who could stand upon the brink of the grimmest precipice in Sicily and look down untroubled to its distant floor. Her senses were confused by the lights, the odors, by the long, strange journey through the night, closely mewed ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... small, softly crisp, feminine figure beside the tall, fine-drawn and—in a way—magnificent masculine one, troubled her. Yet she made no attempt to accompany or to follow them. Her head ached. Her mind and soul ached too. She felt spent and giddy, as from chasing round and round in an ever-shifting circle some tormenting, cleverly lovely thing which perpetually eluded her. Which thing, finally, floated out of the door there, drawing a personage unmeasurably its superior, away ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... heart rose like a freshet, And it swept me on before, Giddy as a whirling stick, Till I felt the ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... a canvas encampment. A range of solid stone villas like those of Newport, so far as congruity with a watering-place goes, pains the taste like a false note in music. Atlantic City pauses halfway between the stone house and the tent, and erects herself in woodwork. A quantity of bright, rather giddy-looking structures, with much open-work and carved ruffling about the eaves and balconies, are poised lightly on the sand, following the course of the two main avenues which lead parallel with the shore, and the series of short, straight, direct streets which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various

... this temple is a mosque built by Arungzebe to annoy the Hindoos. I ascended the Maido Rai Minar or minaret, and from its giddy height had a magnificent panorama of the city and its environs, with the Ganges flowing majestically beneath, its left bank teeming with life, while the ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant

... Clasps it laid close his peaked and gleaming face Propped in the pillow. Breathe silent, lofty lime, Your curfew secrets out in fervid scent To the attendant shadows! Tinge the air Of the midsummer night that now begins, At an owl's oaring flight from dusk to dusk And downward caper of the giddy bat Hawking against the lustre of bare skies, With something of th' unfathomable bliss He, who lies dying there, knew once of old In the serene trance of a summer night When with th' abundance of ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various

... no sooner had Paul mastered subject A than he was immediately provided with subject B, from which we passed to C, and even D. Often he felt giddy and confused, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... The Giddy Lady is one who, having been plunged at an early age into smart society, is whirled perpetually round in a vortex of pleasures and excitements. In the effort to keep her head above water, she is as likely as not to lose it. This condition ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various

... and with unsteady haste gained the deck and made for the side. The heaving waters made him giddy to look at, and he gazed for preference at a thin line of coast ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs

... my hazardous journey; I mounted the rope by the nooses—one, two, three, four, counting them as I mounted. I did not dare to look up or down as I did so, lest I should grow giddy and fall, but kept my eyes fixed firmly always on the one noose in front of me. My brain swam: the rope swayed and creaked. Twenty, thirty, forty! Foot after foot, I slipped them in mechanically, taking up with me the longer coil whose ends were attached ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... yet no shadows blur the magic light, The glamour that surrounds the opening date. Illusions yet undashed my soul excite And of success in luring whispers prate. I see myself in form; my thoughts aspire To reach the giddy summit of desire. Lovers and such may sing a roundelay, Whate'er that be, to greet returning May; For me, not much—the season's all too short; I hear the mower hum and scent the fray. Cricket in sooth is Sovran ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various

... cruelly beaten; of a siege in a church, where he and three others had taken sanctuary, and where, amid flying missiles and the crashing of stained glass, they had fought off the mob till rescued by platoons of constables; of pitched and giddy battles on stairways, galleries, and balconies; of smashed windows, collapsed stairways, wrecked lecture halls, and broken heads and bones—and then, with a regretful sigh, he looked at me and said: "How I envy you big, strong men! I'm ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London

... unintelligible sounds of the charmer—reason, charm he never so wisely. With respect to superficial accomplishments, the rake certainly has the advantage; and of these, females can form an opinion, for it is their own ground. Rendered gay and giddy by the whole tenor of their lives, the very aspect of wisdom, or the severe graces of virtue must have a lugubrious appearance to them; and produce a kind of restraint from which they and love, sportive child, naturally revolt. Without taste, excepting of the lighter kind, for taste is the offspring ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... eyes, and open them very cautiously in a minute or so's time. One still sees. The sense of vision is a question of length of vibration, and not of multitude of impacts; but there's a kind of shock to the retina, a nasty giddy confusion just at the time, if the eyes are ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... somewhere else. ... Do you think Japan has anything to offer a man such as myself? Would there be any chance there for a newspaper run by an American? Are there any wealthy Americans there who would be likely to put up a few thousands for such an enterprise? ... Life is not the "giddy, reeling dream of love and fame" that it once was, and I have decided on gathering a few essential dollars. Now Japan may not be the place I am looking for, ... but unless I am greatly mistaken, a man who is up on American affairs and alive to business opportunities could do well in Japan. ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... this rule are a few common words in which g is hard before e or i. They include—-give, get, gill, gimlet, girl, gibberish, gelding, gerrymander, gewgaw, geyser, giddy, gibbon, gift, gig, giggle, gild, gimp, gingham, gird, girt, girth, eager, and begin. G is soft before a consonant in judgment{,} lodgment, acknowledgment, etc. Also in a few words from foreign languages c is soft before other vowels, though in such cases it should always be written ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... profanation amid the scenery he loved. To guide into his private and secret haunts a party that had no appreciation of their loveliness disgusted him. It was a waste of his time to conduct flippant young men and giddy girls who made a noisy and irreverent lark of the expedition. And, for their part, they did not appreciate the benefit of being accompanied by a poet and a philosopher. They neither understood nor valued his special knowledge ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... terrible risk to run. Even if thou saidest nothing, and Helladia under the torture accused thee of having been privy to her design, it might have a bad effect on the Emperor's mind. If he put thee to the torture too—but no! that's impossible. I feel faint and giddy, dear child, and unable to decide a point of such importance. Come ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... these, leaving, of course, behind, or within it, a hole between each bracket for the convenient dejection of hot sand and lead. This form is best seen, I think, in the old Scotch castles; it is very grand, but has a giddy look, and one is afraid of the whole thing toppling off the wall. The next step was to deepen the brackets, so as to get them propped against a great depth of the main rampart, and to have the inner ends of the stones ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... black velvet cap gave him a picturesque appearance; with his white peaked beard and moustache, and his dark sunken eyes, he would have passed for a Venetian Doge; the mass of brilliant bloom, and the warm flower-scented air made Olivia slightly giddy. ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... piped a shriller psalm, The dancers thro' their mystery moved, Untouched, untouching, and the twirl That set our giddy heads awhirl, Served but to ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob

... sentimental, and she's fond of admiration, And she sometimes flirts a little in the season's giddy whirl; But win her if you can, sir, she may prove your life's salvation, For an angel masquerading oft ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... taste of his age somewhat affected and chilled his genius, yet he knew of other models than Racine and Boileau. He drank of "Siloa's brook." He admired and imitated the poetry of the Bible. He loves not, indeed, its wilder and higher strains; he gets giddy on the top of Lebanon; the Valley of Dry Bones he treads with timid steps; and his look up to the "Terrible Crystal" is more of fright than of exultation. But the lovelier, softer, simpler, and more pensive parts of the Bible are very dear ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... that evening we arrived in London, where I had not been for several years before; its immensity, the perpetual noise of carriages, the heaviness of the atmosphere, made me feel in another state of existence, and when giddy with the rapid motion of the carriage, flushed by the sudden transition from the cold night air to the vicinity of a blazing coal fire, I sat down to dinner in the small front dining-room of a house in Brook-street. It was only the uneasiness which ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton

... too, had dreams of a dark-eyed girl, who, in the shadowy church, with the music she had made still vibrating on the ear, had promised to be his. Dreams, too, he had of a giddy throng who scoffed at the dark-eyed girl, calling her by the name which he himself had given her. It was not meet, they said, that he should wed the "Milkman's Heiress," but with a nobleness of soul unusual in him, he paid no heed to their remarks, ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes

... soldiery, who intent on saving themselves were brutally trying to force a passage to the door regardless of the wailing women, whose frantic appeals for rescue and assistance were heart-rending to hear, . . all these sounds increased the horror of the situation,—and Theos, blind, giddy, and confused, listened to the uproar around him with something of the affrighted compassion that a stranger in Hell might be supposed to feel when hearkening to the ceaseless plaints of the self-tortured wicked. He endeavored to grope his way to Sah-luma's side,—and just ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... at the further bank, and then at the open gate of the Celestial City,—it was this that kept Standfast's head so steady and his heart like a glowing coal while he stood and talked in the middle of the giddy stream. You would have thought it was Paul himself talking to himself on the road to Assos. For I defy even the apostle himself to have talked better or more boldly to himself even on the solid midday road than Standfast talked to himself in the ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... Afterwards I found he was lecturing all those sitters on the ethics of gravity and the inherent properties of falling bodies; at the moment I only knew he was directly in my line as I descended, and him round the waist I seized, giddy with the light and fresh air, waltzed him down the slope with the force of my impetus, and, tripping at the bottom, rolled over and over recklessly with him sheer into the arms of the gaping crowd below. Over and over we went into the thickest mass of bodies, making a ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold



Words linked to "Giddy" :   frivolous, lightheaded, empty-headed, vertiginous, dizzy, silly, woozy, giddiness, airheaded, ill, light-headed, featherbrained, sick



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