Wednesday, January 6, 2010

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:

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)


5 comments:

Holly said...

Thanks for the lesson!

heidi said...

That's ADORABLE! I love the idea of New Word Wednesday! I hope you'll do all kinds of geeky wordy things now that you're immersed in all that book-larnin'.

This reminds me of Rach's Oxford Comma post. I loved that post. Neither vocab stuff nor grammar stuff thrilled me in school; but it's such fun, now. Maybe it has to do with being NONCOMPULSORY!

It's Me said...

Nice to see your geeky side coming out into the open... makes me feel a little bit better about myself. :) Love you!!!

Seth said...

Reading Karen's blog makes me feel sublimely vertiginous.

Rachel said...

Reading Seth's comments on your blog makes me feel vertiginous!