Dizziness

How to spell dizziness

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce dizziness

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dizziness mean?

1. nounA sensation of spinning, light-headedness, or unsteady balance.

Dizziness in a sentence

• The medication can cause dizziness if taken on an empty stomach.

• Sudden dizziness forced her to sit down on the train platform.

Where does dizziness come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built on the adjective 'dizzy', which descends from the Old English 'dysig', a word that originally meant 'foolish' or 'stupid' rather than anything to do with spinning. Related words in neighbouring languages, such as Old Dutch and Low German forms, carried similar senses of giddiness and foolishness, so the idea of a muddled or unsteady head was always close at hand. Over the centuries the sense drifted away from mental folly and settled on the physical feeling of a whirling, light head and unsteady balance. The abstract noun was formed by adding the native Germanic suffix '-ness', which turns an adjective into the name of a state or quality, just as 'happy' gives 'happiness'. The spelling trap comes straight from this build: you keep the doubled 'z' of 'dizzy', and because the base ends in a consonant plus 'y', the 'y' changes to 'i' before '-ness', giving 'dizzi-ness' rather than 'dizzyness'.

How the word is built

• dizzy (from Old English dysig: foolish, giddy)
• -ness (noun-forming suffix meaning 'state or quality of')