New Word Wednesday

I come across a lot of words I don't know in the books I read and because of this I keep a small dictionary on my nightstand so I have it at the ready when one of these unknowns pops up. I began marking each word I looked up with a red dot so I'd know if I'd looked it up before. I've been surprised at how many words I look up several times.

Because I'm barraged by so many new words, it's hard for me to remember them all and more importantly, begin including them in my regular vocabulary. There are some words I hear all the time and know that I should know what they mean, but never bothered to look them up. My vocabulary isn't very big so I thought if I started doing a weekly post on the new words I find, maybe I'll remember them. It's worth a shot I guess! So without further ado, here is this week's new word:

Vertiginous

Pronunciation: ver-tij-uh-nuhs

-adjective

1. whirling; spinning; rotary: vertiginous currents of air.

2. affected with vertigo; dizzy.

3. liable or threatening to cause vertigo: a vertiginous climb.

4. apt to change quickly; unstable: a vertiginous economy.

Related words: dizzy, giddy, woozy, unstable, lightheaded, whirling
(from Dictionary.com)

I can't remember the exact sentence I read, but I saw this word in "The River Why" by David James Duncan. It said something like: "Gus jumped into the relationship with Eddy vertiginously."

I had an inkling it was related to the word "vertigo" but was having a hard time putting two and two together. After looking up the definition, I determined that in that instance, 'vertiginous' was more closely synonymous with 'giddy.'

That's all for today, class. Now go forth and vocabularize! (or something like that)