Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




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.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Giddiness" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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 detail ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... 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 meet ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... after reaching Singapore, where they are sometimes sent to private individuals for domestic use, although they thrive very well both in the Philippines and in Java. At Singapore, however, after being a few days ashore, some of them are attacked by a peculiar sickness, apparently giddiness of the head, which invariably ends in death in a few minutes after the commencement of the attack. All these birds are subject to it at that place, if allowed to go about too long before being ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking

... 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 ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering

... 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 ...
— The Old Manse (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... been out. Still the terrible sensations were not nearly so bad as they were last night; and I may further inform you, that towards the end of last week, while passing through the Exchange in Edinburgh, I was seized with such a giddiness that I staggered, and would, I think, have fallen, had I not gone into an entry, where I leaned against the wall, and became quite unconscious for some seconds.'" Dr. Balfour stated his opinion of the case; told him that he was over-working ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... nevertheless, against reasonable judgment, I did. Noticing some tufts of artemisia in a cleft of rock, I filled my mouth with the leaves, hoping their bitter taste might help to keep caution keen and prevent giddiness. In spite of myself I reached the little ledge, got my heels well set, and worked sidewise twenty or thirty feet to a point close to the out-plunging current. Here the view is perfectly free down into the heart of the bright irised throng of comet-like streamers into which ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir

... giddiness overwhelmed Villefort; great drops of acrid sweat fell from his face upon the papers which he held ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... vigorously, and wounded him through the eyeball. "A cursed ungentle son-in-law, truly! As long as I remain alive, my eyesight will be the worse. Whenever I go against the wind, my eyes will water; and peradventure my head will burn, and I shall have a giddiness every new moon. Like the bite of a mad dog is the stroke of this poisoned iron. Cursed be the fire in which it was forged!" And they ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... moment a feeling of giddiness seized Margaret. A great blackness seemed to close round her, shutting out the busy scene, the voices of the bearers, and the shuffle of their feet across the tiled hall. With a supreme effort she mastered herself, and somehow knew she ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... flared into jealous hate. He felt certain that the girl was quite capable of strolling along the extreme edge of the precipice without a trace of giddiness. Yet now she was clinging to Blake even more closely than was Genevieve. There was more than apprehension in the clasp of her little brown hand on the engineer's shoulder. Her ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet

... step and tried to wrench the door open. It was locked, locked from without; it defied my every effort. I had only just standing room for my feet. Below me the floor of the room was still racing round with terrible speed. I dared scarcely look at it, for the giddiness in my head increased each moment. The next instant a soft footstep was distinctly audible, and I saw a gleam of light through a chink of the door. I heard a hand fumbling at the lock, the door was slowly opened outwards, and I saw the face ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade

... wheeled multi-colored and kaleidoscopic before Ste. Marie's eyes, and in his ears there was a rushing of great winds, but he set his teeth and clung with all the strength he had to the tree which sheltered him. His first feeling, after that initial giddiness, was anger, sheer anger, a bewildered and astonished fury. He had thought to find this poor youth in captivity, pining through prison bars for the home and the loved ones and the familiar life from which he had been ruthlessly torn. ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman

... 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 ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... saying, 'No,' and in abstaining from what the people about me were doing,—I took half a pipe, filling the lower half of the bole with salt. I was soon, however, compelled to resign it, in consequence of a giddiness and distressful feeling in my eyes, which, as I had drunk but a single glass of ale, must, I knew, have been the effect of the tobacco. Soon after, deeming myself recovered, I sallied forth to my engagement; but the walk and the fresh air brought on all ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson

... under a hot sun, the head may be sensibly protected by green leaves or grass in the hat; they may be advantageously moistened, but not enough to drip about the ears. Under such circumstances the slightest giddiness, dimness of sight, or confusion of ideas, should be taken as a warning of possible sunstroke, instantly demanding rest, ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould

... instance, you cannot see a precipice without wishing to throw yourself down, you blame not the precipice, but your giddiness; and if you are wise you avoid precipices in future. You do not rail against steep places because you have a bad circulation. So it is with women: you should not contemn women because they rouse a devil ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding

... from the height of nine, to that of sixty, feet from the ground. [71] In this last and lofty station, the Syrian Anachoret resisted the heat of thirty summers, and the cold of as many winters. Habit and exercise instructed him to maintain his dangerous situation without fear or giddiness, and successively to assume the different postures of devotion. He sometimes prayed in an erect attitude, with his outstretched arms in the figure of a cross, but his most familiar practice was that of bending his meagre ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... 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 that ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson

... knew what 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 ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... had slipped one hand behind him. He had drawn a slung shot from his pocket. It struck Andy's head, and he went down with a sense of sickening giddiness. ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness

... known as grand mal, the transient loss of consciousness without convulsive seizures was called petit mal. Attacks of petit mal might come on at any time, and were usually accompanied by a feeling of faintness and vertigo. The general symptoms were sudden jerkings of the limbs, sudden tremors, giddiness and unconsciousness. The eyes became fixed, the face slightly pale, sometimes very red, and there was frequently some almost automatic action. In grand mal there was always warning of an attack, in ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees

... Giddiness, or Swimming in the Head, will generally be removed by proceeding in the same ...
— An Account of the Extraordinary Medicinal Fluid, called Aether. • Matthew Turner

... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... nobler nature than that of the vain, selfish, indolent mother from whom the daughter derived many of the surface features of her character: and she longed to see that nobler nature rouse itself to work, and sweep away the outward vanity and giddiness. It might be that even this would show her the real hollowness of the gilded world; that this one hour's journey over the weary land would help to drive her for shelter to the shadow ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt

... not understand. 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. ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... contracted a disorder, as he thought, by eating too much fruit. The original of diseases is commonly obscure. Almost every boy 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 Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer. Certainly, there be that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affecting freewill in thinking, as well ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various

... tumult which arose. She left them with their mother, after a few minutes, and went out to breathe the outside air, where at least there was quiet and freedom. To think as she went out into the red morning sunshine that her old life was over, made Nettie's head swim with bewildering giddiness. She went up softly, like a creature in a dream, past St Roque's, where already the Christmas decorators had begun their pretty work—that work which, several ages ago, being yesterday, Nettie had taken the children in to see. Of all things that had happened between that moment and this, ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... influence over the large intestines. The combination of these two drugs forms a Valuable Medicine in the treatment of complaints arising from Disorders of the Liver and Bowels, such as: Furred Tongue, Disagreeable Taste in the Mouth, Headache, Giddiness, General Lassitude, Pains in the Back—especially under the shoulder blade—and irregular action of the bowels and other excretory organs. Moreover these Medicines are made up into very small sized pills, which are covered with a tasteless pearly white film, and they will ...
— Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands • John Linwood Pitts

... of blood in the liver, and the sluggish condition of that organ must necessarily produce pain in the ribs; while the overdue of the catamenia, the cardiac fever, and debility of the respiration of the lungs, should occasion frequent giddiness in the head, and swimming of the eyes, the certain recurrence of perspiration between the periods of 3 to 5 and 5 to 7, and the sensation of being seated on board ship. The obstruction of the spleen by the liver ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... 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 ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... one moment: I have been ill, and am still subject to fits of giddiness. A mere vertigo; nothing more." But he said the words gasping for breath, and looked so deadly pale that Phillis felt quite frightened ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... Dinah sitting suddenly up, in spite of a sensation of giddiness which made everything swim before her eyes for a few moments; and Rachel Harmer looked down into her face ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green

... at Clermont, that I retired very early to my bed. My complaint was a giddiness in the head, brought on by riding in the sun. Every country has its peculiar medicine as well as its religion, and in every country there are certain family receipts, certain homely prescriptions, which, from their experienced ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney

... brambles and tall bracken; then the cob made a bold dash at a dense mass of low growth, when there was a violent jerk as he made a bound, followed by a feeling as if the boy's arms were being torn out at the shoulders, a rush through the air, a heavy blow, and a sensation of tearing, and all was, giddiness ...
— Young Robin Hood • G. Manville Fenn

... the narrow stairway of the crockets: but to descend by them with a lot of useless senses about me would be a very different matter. No giddiness attacked me as yet; indeed I knew rather than felt my position to be serious. For a moment I thought of leaving my perch and letting myself slip down the face of the slates, to be pulled up short by the parapet; but the length of the slide daunted ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... support on ground so precipitous: above and below were drift- ways, so small as to seem threads along the mountain side. A car, drawn by oxen, is creeping round yon airy eminence; the nearer wheel is actually hanging over the horrid descent; giddiness seizes the brain, and the eye is rapidly withdrawn. A cloud intervenes, and when again you turn to watch their progress, the objects of your anxiety have disappeared. Still more narrow becomes the path ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... cloud of stars! He was on his back, and the ostrich, which did not seem to be affected by giddiness, was on him, punishing him dreadfully. Luckily an ostrich cannot kick a man very hard when he is flat on the ground. If he could, there would have been an end of John Niel, and his story need never ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... torpor, weakness or loss of intellect, softening of the brain, paralysis, nervous debility, dyspepsia, functional derangement of the heart, and diseases of the liver and kidneys are not uncommon consequences of the excessive employment of this plant. A sense of faintness, nausea, giddiness, dryness of the throat, tremblings, feelings of fear, disquietude, and general nervous prostration must frequently warn persons addicted to this habit that they are sapping the very foundation ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... darkness was complete. I stretched my hands out, to meet but empty air. If I were alone I could not tell: I touched nothing, I heard nothing, I saw nothing. A strange giddiness came upon me; my limbs trembled under the weight of my body and gave way; I lost consciousness. It is what we call in this country ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... appeared to be a narrow, spiral pathway. In a few seconds they had ascended about fifty feet, and March, projecting out from the precipice as he did, owing to his position in the rider's left arm, felt a horrible sensation of giddiness come over him, and could not ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne

... but her German countess. Then changing her tone to one of confidence, which the high-bred homeliness of her Austrian manner rendered inexpressibly engaging, she said, 'I must apologize, Monsieur, for the giddiness of my sister-in-law, which I fear ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... made no mystery of the matter. They explained with whom Fanny was, and where and when she might be seen. Ah! and this was much more than mere giddiness; it was shamelessness, jealousy, hatred! Matilda could not forgive Fanny for avoiding her in the street, and the others could not pardon her for possessing a treasure which they possessed no longer—innocence! What a dish for ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai

... of your loss?" asked the manager, as he began to assist me to make things straight, and the question gave me inspiration. I made a hurried search, and I must have shown feeling, for I was conscious of pallor of face and momentary giddiness. ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton

... governed for a short time in the name of Gallienus; but the fickle Alexandrians soon made a rebel emperor for themselves. The Roman republic, says the historian, was often in danger from the headstrong giddiness of the Alexandrians. Any civility forgotten, a place in the baths not yielded, a heap of rubbish, or even a pair of old shoes in the streets, was often enough to throw the state into the greatest ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... when you so treat your teachers and governors? Think you, for an instant, of the labour, the anxiety, the perpetual self-denial, the patience required by an instructor of childhood, even when the children do their best; but when deceit, hypocrisy, and hardness of heart is also added to the giddiness and thoughtlessness of youth, what must be ...
— Brotherly Love - Shewing That As Merely Human It May Not Always Be Depended Upon • Mrs. Sherwood

... good against the Falling-sickness, and giddiness in the head, it cleanseth the Reins ...
— A Queens Delight • Anonymous

... it 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 will ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell

... reaches its noon, glorious with sunlight, rich with harvests, and bright with color. Be alive in mind, heart and body. Be joyous without giddiness, loving without silliness, attractive without being flirtatious, attentive to others' needs without being officious, and instructive without too great a display ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

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

... 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 her surprise, passed ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... lamps which his uncle and the other men held in their hands, that the shafts were rushing upwards at a fearful rate, while the light of day, which he could still see above him, grew gradually less and less. A giddiness overtook him. He might have fallen, had not his uncle still held him by the shoulder. How long he had been descending he could not tell, when he found the cage come to a stand-still, and that he was down beneath the surface of the earth, a ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston

... there," he said, "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 ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson

... to suspect this 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. I suspect ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... moreover that as he was going through the air, the devil bade him open his eyes, and he did so, and saw himself so near the body of the moon, so it seemed to him, that he could have laid hold of it with his hand, and that he did not dare to look at the earth lest he should be seized with giddiness. So that, Sancho, it will not do for us to uncover ourselves, for he who has us in charge will be responsible for us; and perhaps we are gaining an altitude and mounting up to enable us to descend at ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... came. While a young man, he had suffered from a painful attack of vertigo, brought on by a surfeit of fruit; "eating," he says, in a letter to Mrs. Howard, "an hundred golden pippins at a time." This had occasioned a deafness; and both giddiness and deafness had recurred at intervals, and at last manifestly affected his mind. Once, when walking with some friends, he had pointed to an elm-tree, blasted by lightning, and had said, "I shall be like that tree: I shall ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... 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 ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... 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 ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... fortune-tellers, alchemists, rhymers, poets, painters, projectors, mathematicians, watchmakers, sing-songs, musicianers, and the devil and all of others that are subject to Queen Whims (Motteux gives the following footnote:—'La Quinte, This means a fantastic Humour, Maggots, or a foolish Giddiness of Brains; and also, a fifth, or the Proportion of Five in music, &c.'). They have very fair legible patents to show for't, as anybody may see. Panurge had no sooner heard this but he was upon the high-rope, and began to rail at them like mad. What o' devil d'ye mean, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... doctor who came to see me every week found me much better, and finally there came recovery, since I could get up after having been in bed eleven months. I got up without any discomfort, not even the least giddiness, and in a fortnight I could go out. It is indeed thanks to you that I am cured, for the doctor says that for all that the medicines did me, I might just as well have ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue

... necessity never happened, 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 in ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius

... a crying woman. But some great change has befallen me, I believe. What is it? That swoon—it wasn't mere faintness, giddiness; it was this change coming ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero

... 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

... to 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 was a ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... before his departure on the ill-starred expedition 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 ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... so firmly secured that this process took some time, during which Ali, by the strange revulsion that came upon him, felt as if he must fall prone upon his face from sheer giddiness; but by an effort he stood firm till his limbs ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... 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 unpleasant weather, ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur

... of those great times when men lived in the giddiness and the exultation of a constant creation—when a day was sufficient for Rubens to paint the "Kermesse" thirteen days to paint the "Mages", even or eight to paint the "Communion de St. Francois d'Assise"—and blotting from our mind the fabulous production of Tintoretto and ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... and give an account of his spiritual history. As may be expected, it is very often inaccurately picturesque, and is framed after the model of the journey to Damascus. A sinner, for example, who swears at his pious wife, and threatens to beat her, is suddenly smitten with giddiness and awful pains. He throws himself on his knees before her, and thenceforward he is a "changed character". I had to tell the church that my experience had not been eventful. I was young, and had enjoyed the privilege ...
— The Early Life of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford

... be perpetually going up or coming down in a balloon; and to persons afflicted with giddiness, each day's excursion, however delightful, takes the form of a nightmare when one's head rests on the pillow. For days, nay, weeks after these drives on the Roof of France, my sleep was haunted with giddy climbs and still giddier ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... its steeples, pouring into his ears, again and again, in a tuneless, grating, discordant, jerking, hideous vibration that made his ideas "spin round and round till they lost themselves in a whirl of vexation and giddiness, and dropped down dead." He had never before so suffered, nor did he again; but this was his description to me next day, and his excuse for having failed in a promise to send me his title. Only two days later, however, came a letter ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... swam round Professor Lachsyrma, and the mummy behind the door grinned. The plaster casts and the statues seemed to wave their mutilated limbs with the joy of demoniacal possession. Dead things were startled into life. Sick giddiness permeated his brain. It was some horrible nightmare. Yet his soul's tempest was entirely subjective; outwardly his demeanour suffered no change. His tormentor noted with astonishment and admiration his apparent self-control. There was merely a slight ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... 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 ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss

... infinite gulfs, a rebirth for a man who had died a hundred times and might die a thousand times more as the years piled up and became centuries. It was a spinning, whirling, flashing ascent from blackness to coruscating colors, brightness, giddiness. ...
— A Place in the Sun • C.H. Thames

... if I could," I said, looking at him with pleased eagerness. Mrs. Flaxman entered the room then, ready for church. My head was aching severely, and a distressing giddiness occasionally seized me; but I was so eager for this long coveted privilege, I kept silent about my feelings. Sickness and I were such strangers to each other, I scarcely ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter

... university, he lived with Sir William Temple as his friend, and domestic companion. When he had been about two years in the family of his patron, he contracted a very long, and dangerous illness, by eating an immoderate quantity of fruit. To this surfeit he used to ascribe the giddiness in his head, which, with intermissions sometimes of a longer, and sometimes of a shorter continuance, pursued him till it seemed to compleat its conquest, by rendering him the exact image of one of his own STRULDBRUGGS; a miserable spectacle, devoid of ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... silence; the contraction of the elder man's heart had brought a giddiness to his brain, a dimness of his eyes, through which he was ill able to ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... complacency is at 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 very ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... privation, ceaseless and incredible toil. The magnitude of the latter task appalled him; fact and figure whirled in his confused mind. He was standing, and he suddenly felt dizzy, and sat down. The giddiness vanished, but left him with twitching fingers, a clouded vision. He might get them all together, explain, persuade.... Goddy! it was for their good. They needn't be cross-grained. There it would be, the offer, for them to take or leave. But, if they delayed, watch out! Railroad people couldn't ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... edge on that particular morning, I felt something like giddiness at seeing it so gentle and so white. It had never looked so gay. I slipped rapidly beneath the willows, to an open space where a broad patch of sunlight fell on the dark grass. There I laid me down on my stomach, ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... My EMILY is not without her faults—"was not without them," I should rather say, for during ten idyllic years of courtship, by precept and example I have striven to mould her to a helpmate fit for me. Now, thank the Gods, my labours are complete—she stands redeemed from all her giddiness! (Here he steps upon the pin, and utters an exclamation). Ha! what is this? I'm wounded ... agony! With what a darting pain my foot's transfixed! I'll summon help (with calm courage)—yet, stay, I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various

... feet, 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 ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... finding himself almost encompassed, not being able to make speed enough with his three legs, let me drop on a ridge tile, and made his escape. Here I sat for some time, five 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 ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift

... earthquake 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

... 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 signs—succeeded so ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole

... their superior, and tying their robe, which is very wide, round their waist, begin to turn round with an amazing swiftness, moving fast or slow as the music is played. This lasts above an hour, without any of them showing the least appearance of giddiness, which is not to be wondered at when it is considered they are used to it from their infancy. There were among them some little dervishes, of six or seven years old, who seemed no more disordered by that exercise than the others. At the end of the ceremony they shout out, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous

... cannot have failed to be struck by the 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 ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... tell you all about it, as well as any one, for I was one of the guests at that melancholy wedding. Your friend, and I, and many others were invited. Hallberg had some idea of not going; he was unwell, with violent headache and giddiness. But we persuaded him, and he consented to go with us. The first day he felt tolerably well. We hunted in the open field; we were all on horseback, the day hot. Hallberg felt worse. The second day ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various

... because of the weight, but by reason of the giddiness which assailed Paul. He thought it had suddenly grown foggy, for there was a mist between him and all the dimly visible objects of the night There were coloured sparks in the mist by-and-by, and when once they had got their burden through the open hall and had laid it on a plain ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... convalescent State, complained of such a Giddiness, and Lightness of the Head, that they could neither walk nor stand; others, of a Dimness of the Eyes. These Symptoms, for the most part, went off as the Patients gathered Strength: The Use of the Bark, with now ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro

... the Royal Engineers and their pumps. For the place was as wild and romantic as you can imagine, the wells being hidden away in deep caverns with precipitous sides, in the midst of frowning and rugged rocks. The sailors, with their contempt of heights, and entire freedom from giddiness, swung themselves down into the most horrible abysses, if only they had a rope made fast at top, without a moment's hesitation, fixing pipes by which the precious fluid was pumped up and ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... ancient column. Fever patients resort thither, and by attaching a waxed thread to the inner side of the column believe that they transfer the fever from themselves to the pillar. In the Mark of Brandenburg they say that if you suffer from giddiness you should strip yourself naked and run thrice round a flax-field after sunset; in that way the flax will get the giddiness and you ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... 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 ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... ought 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 ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... but, slippery with blood, it 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 ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey

... painful nature, determined him to set out from Matlock on a journey to Scotland. The weather was now much improved, and during the journey he recruited his strength. Though as yet he could not sit upright at rest for half an hour together without a disposition to giddiness, dimness of sight, and deliquium, he was able to sit upright under the motion of a post-chaise during a journey of from 40 to 70 miles daily, and his appetite began to improve. Still his cough continued, and his hectic flushings, though the ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... the doorway. Behind him again was a younger man, stern-faced, with quiet, very steady blue eyes and a firm-lined mouth. All this she noticed, why she could not have explained, for the man was a perfect stranger to her; then the fear and giddiness which all this time she had been fighting against gained the upper hand and, swaying a little, she moved forward with the intention of getting outside, only to fall in a dead faint across ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson

... navigating the raft, and the subsequent rest, had caused my feet to swell enormously, my ankles being about three times their normal size, so swollen were they. I experienced an unbearable pain in my heart, with continuous heart-burning and sudden throbbings, succeeded by spells of exhaustion. Giddiness in my head was constant, and I was so weak that it was all I could do to move. Even the exertion of shifting from one side to the other of the boat on which I was travelling was enough to make me almost ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... I noticed something which I may truly describe as extraordinary. I have had young men present themselves to me who turned out to be notoriously unfit, either from giddiness, from being profane or intemperate, or from some bad quality or other. But I never remember a case which equalled the cool culpability of this. While infringing the first principles of social decorum you might at least have respected the ordinance ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy

... an ice quite restored her liveliness. It is well to be good-humoured; but it is unlucky, nay, wrong, when a check from friends without authority to scold, does not suffice to bring soberness instead of rattling giddiness. Lady de la Poer was absolutely glad to break up the dinner, so as to work off the folly and excitement by moving about, before it should make the little girl expose herself, ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge

... 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

... great while cut, meets an experienced and noted physician in consultation. This is the case. A slender, lymphatic young woman is suckling two lusty twins, the intervals of suction being occupied on her part with palpitations, headaches, giddiness, throbbing in the head, and various nervous symptoms, her cheeks meantime getting bloodless, and her strength running away in company with her milk. The old experienced physician, seeing the yellowish waxy look ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... a-rake, the intertangled rigging, the background of black barges drifting downwards, the lines and ripple of the water as the sun comes out, if you look too steadily, daze the eyes and cause a sense of giddiness. It is so difficult to realise so much mass—so much bulk—moving so swiftly, and in so intertangled a manner; a mighty dance of thousands of tons—gliding, slipping, drifting onwards, yet without apparent effort. Thousands upon thousands of ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... uneasiness made Madam de Warrens take the resolution of crossing the Lake, and throwing herself at the feet of Victor Amadeus, who was then at Evian; thus abandoning her husband, family, and country by a giddiness similar to mine, which precipitation she, too, has found sufficient ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... left Slough, accompanied by Lady Herschel, for Bath, he being very unwell; and the constant complaint of giddiness in the head so much increased, that they were obliged to be four nights on the road both going and coming. The last moments before he stepped into the carriage were spent in walking with me through his library and workrooms, pointing with anxious looks to every shelf and ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous

... to two of the stems, and he was gently swinging to and fro. But it was not nice, for the movement made him feel giddy and strange. And then it was that Bob fancied he tried to stop the swing and sit still, but somehow it would not stop, and the feeling of giddiness increased. ...
— The Little Skipper - A Son of a Sailor • George Manville Fenn

... 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 take fresh heart, could nerve herself anew, if aid came to her, ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch

... 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 ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith

... he nearly lost his life by being buried under a heap of stones out of an old wall, 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 ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... 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

... for I knew the sensation and its danger well. It has nothing to do with physical giddiness. Those who are cliff- bred, and who never were giddy for an instant in their lives, have often felt themselves impelled to leap from masts, and tree-tops, and cliffs; and nothing but the most violent effort of will could break the fascination. I cannot but think, by the bye, that ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... smoke was exhausted, they had stopped up the chimney and every crevice of the house. Each man then turned into his bunk for the night, "all rejoicing much in the warmth and prattling a long time with each other." At last an unaccustomed giddiness and faintness came over them, of which they could not guess the cause, but fortunately one of the party had the instinct, before he lost consciousness, to open the chimney, while another forced open the door and fell in a swoon ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... that were trembling violently from weakness. He looked down and saw the snow reddening at his feet. The blood flowed freely as ever. He had not thought the bite was so severe. He controlled his giddiness and stooped to examine the wound. The snow seemed rushing up to meet him, and he recoiled from it as from a blow. He had a panic fear that he might fall down, and after a struggle he managed to stand upright again. He was afraid of that ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London

... Unconscious realisation, in his very bearing and manner. Or his mind may be concentrated on the scientific bearings of the case, so that he will involuntarily treat the patient as a specimen on which to pursue his researches. The steeplejack experiences no giddiness or fear in scaling a church spire because the thought of danger is immediately replaced by the knowledge of his own clear ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks

... you know what 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, close by the steep declivity, where no tree, no branch is found, ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen

... as Paul 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

... In spite of her giddiness and frivolity, the girl pronounced these last words so decisively, that Rudolph felt, to his great regret, that he would never obtain from her the desired information about Germain; and he felt a repugnance to employ artifice in surprising her confidence. He paused a moment, ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... her shame and promote the advantageous match she had planned, her mother had not hesitated to destroy the offspring of their intrigue. That the consequence should be the total derangement of amind which was constitutionally unsettled by giddiness and vanity, was extremely natural; and such was, in fact, the history of Madge ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... brink of a precipice. A quadrille, a ballad, a picnic party is sometimes cause sufficient of frightful evils. You are hurried on by the presumptuous voice of vanity and pride, on the faith of a smile, or through giddiness and folly! Shame and misery and remorse are three Furies awaiting every woman the moment she oversteps ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac

... 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 draft. Almost instantly afterward 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 ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various

... the provoking sound of the silver and gold—when he saw bubbling out of the bags the shining crowns, which glittered like fish from the sweep-net—when he felt himself plunging his hands up to the elbow in that still rising tide of yellow and white coins, a giddiness seized him, and like a man struck by lightning, he sank heavily down upon the enormous heap, which his weight caused to roll away in all directions. Planchet, suffocated with joy, had lost his senses. D'Artagnan threw a ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... she went on for a pace or two and turned for Russell. Seeing her walk thus far with ease and in safety, he ventured after her. The ledge was wide enough to walk on without difficulty; and, although the chasm was deep, yet the side did not run down steeply enough to make him feel anything like giddiness. The pathway was easy enough when one had a guide to show the way; and thus Russell, following closely behind Rita, reached the bottom. Then, crossing the brook, she led the way up on the opposite side by the path already mentioned, and at length both reached the tower, ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille

... lie still, 'twas I was only going to sit down, and a sudden Giddiness took me in my Head, which made me fall, and with me the Chair; there is no danger near ye, Sir—I was just coming to sleep ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... of 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 ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully

... measure of the fear of God would induce us to mitigate our opinion; for in such a one it could not exist without some support from within. Confiding in the help of the neighbouring nations, especially the Egyptians; persuaded by the false prophets and the nobles; himself seized by that spirit of giddiness and intoxication which, with irresistible power, carried away the people to the abyss, Zedekiah broke the holy oath which he had sworn to the Chaldeans, and, after an obstinate resistance, Jerusalem was taken and destroyed. As yet, the long suffering of God, and, hence, also that ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg

... after the preparations of iodine have been given internally for some time, they are apt to occasion headach, giddiness, sickness of stomach, with some degree of nausea, langour, and inaptitude for exertion; when these unpleasant sensations and effects occur, the best plan to remove or obviate them is to suspend, for a time, the use of the medicine, or to reduce the dose, ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... the form of a comet—that is, a 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, west, north, or south, and ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe

... 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 ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy



Words linked to "Giddiness" :   symptom, giddy, lightness, lightsomeness, frivolity, frivolousness



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com