# vertigo

Pronunciation: say "VUR-ti-goh" US /ˈvɝtɪɡoʊ/, UK /ˈvɜːtɪɡəʊ/

## Noun

1. Dizziness caused by inner ear disease or by looking down from a great height, with a sense of spinning and a loss of balance.
   - Simple: A spinning feeling that makes you lose your balance, often from heights or an ear problem.
   - _An inner-ear infection left her with vertigo for several days._
   - _Climbers sometimes feel vertigo when they glance down from a sheer cliff face._
2. A disordered or unbalanced state of mind resembling physical dizziness: a feeling of mental giddiness.
   - Simple: A confused, dizzy feeling in the mind, like when life feels out of control.
   - _The rapid pace of change left the whole nation in a state of moral vertigo._
   - _He felt a vertigo of doubt as his old certainties collapsed one by one._
3. Rapid whirling or spinning, as of a dancer or a wheel turning round and round.
   - Simple: The act of spinning round and round very quickly.
   - _The dancers built their performance toward a frenzied vertigo of turns._
   - _The motion of the wheel quickened into a blur of pure vertigo._
4. A minute land snail of the genus Vertigo, typically bearing a tightly coiled, whorled shell.
   - Simple: A very small land snail with a coiled shell, from a group named Vertigo.
   - _Researchers identified the specimen as a vertigo by its tightly coiled shell._
   - _The damp limestone wall sheltered a vertigo no larger than a sesame seed._

## Origin

Borrowed from the Latin word "vertīgō".

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/vertigo (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).