vertiginous
adjective
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It is generally necessary to avoid crowded rooms and the vertiginous influence of the dance, one 19th-century medical work advised. We're not sure what condition this advice was aimed at, but it may well have been "vertigo," a disordered state characterized by whirling dizziness. "Vertiginous," from the Latin vertiginosus, is the adjective form of "vertigo," which in Latin means a turning or whirling action. Both words descend from the Latin verb vertere, meaning "to turn." ("Vertiginous" and "vertigo" are just two of an almost dizzying array of "vertere" offspring, from "adverse" to "vortex.") The "dizzying" sense of "vertiginous" is often used figuratively, as in "vertiginous medical discoveries may drastically change life in the 21st century."
Examples of vertiginous in a Sentence
Natalie Oganesyan, Deadline, 29 May 2025
Too small for there ever to be an airport, this 40-square-mile outcrop of vertiginous cliffs surrounded by churning ocean is only reachable via a berth on one of the South African fishing vessels that come to collect the crayfish.
—The Editors, JSTOR Daily, 23 May 2025
At last, a glass-walled elevator to the restaurant will shoot you upward at thrill-ride speed, hurtling through the hotel’s vertiginous atrium, past the open-plan gym and seemingly endless hotel-room floors, before opening onto the smiling faces of hosts behind a reception desk.
—Helen Rosner, New Yorker, 18 May 2025
The individual tiles and reinforcement bars create a striking impression of an enthralling and vertiginous centrifugal motion.
—Tara Anne Dalbow, Los Angeles Times, 8 May 2025
See All Example Sentences for vertiginous
Cite this Entry
“Vertiginous.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vertiginous. Accessed 6 Jun. 2025.
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vertiginous
adjective
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