giddy, hollowed out, a Goose That Laid the Golden Egg..In London, a parade of Banksy animals sent fans on a giddy hunt.

In London, a parade of Banksy animals sent fans on a giddy hunt.

Anchors get giddy around the crown

Losing a Goose That Laid the Golden Egg

Not everyone on Wall Street is giddy over Facebook's initial public offering of stock.

A group of private exchanges has popped up in recent years to accommodate a fast-growing trading market in the private shares of the Internet companies like Twitter and LinkedIn. Facebook has driven much of this growth, emerging as the most actively traded private company by a wide margin.

Detroit Symphony Returns to a Giddy Reception

By DANIEL J. WAKIN

After a six-month strike, a performance felt like balm for a city often described as hollowed out.

quaff, pop a bottle of champagne, giddy

"Twas well observed by my Lord Bacon, That a little knowledge is apt to puff up, and make men giddy, but a greater share of it will set them right, and bring them to low and humble thoughts of themselves.


A self-diagnosed hyperlexic since first grade, Blount hangs out in dictionaries the way other writers hang out in bars. It’s easy to picture him making a pub crawl of the Oxford English Dictionary, Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (unabridged), the Random House unabridged dictionary and especially the American Heritage Dictionary, where he helps tend bar as a member of its official usage panel. Both giddy and sober, as if ripped on Old Crow fortified with Adderall, Blount chases letters, words and phrases to their origins, and when stumped he ­hypothesizes.

Net Neutrality Speech Draws Strong Reactions

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced proposed net-neutrality rules to a standing-room-only crowd of telecom geeks, giddy consumer advocates and glum industry lobbyists Monday.


giddy

(gĭd'ē)
adj., -di·er, -di·est.

1. 1. Having a reeling, lightheaded sensation; dizzy.
   2. Causing or capable of causing dizziness: a giddy climb to the topmast.
2. Frivolous and lighthearted; flighty.

intr. & tr.v., -died, -dy·ing, -dies.
To become or make giddy.

[Middle English gidi, crazy, from Old English gidig.]

giddily gid'di·ly adv.
giddiness gid'di·ness n.

SYNONYMS   giddy, dizzy, vertiginous. These adjectives mean producing a sensation of whirling and a tendency to fall: a giddy precipice; a dizzy pinnacle; a vertiginous height.

WORD HISTORY   The word giddy refers to fairly lightweight experiences or situations, but at one time it had to do with profundities. Giddy can be traced back to the same Germanic root *gud- that has given us the word God. The Germanic word *gudigaz formed on this root meant "possessed by a god." Such possession can be a rather unbalancing experience, and so it is not surprising that the Old English descendant of *gudigaz, gidig, meant "mad, possessed by an evil spirit," or that the Middle English development of gidig, gidi, meant the same thing, as well as "foolish; mad (used of an animal); dizzy; uncertain, unstable." Our sense "lighthearted, frivolous" represents the ultimate secularization of giddy.