Vertigos

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A sensation of spinning or dizziness that makes one feel off balance
2. an often disorienting experience that can be triggered by various factors
3. a psychological condition characterized by a literal or figurative sense of losing one's equilibrium

Etymology: "Vertigos" is simply the plural of "vertigo", so the history below belongs to the singular. "Vertigo" was borrowed directly from Latin "vertīgō", meaning a whirling or dizziness, a sense that comes from "vertere", "to turn". Its ancestry runs back through Proto-Italic "wertō" to a Proto-Indo-European root "*wert-", meaning to turn, which also gave English words like "worth" in its older sense of becoming or turning into something. The Latin noun carried the idea of turning round in a literal sense, so the English word began as a description of a whirling motion before it came to name the unsteady feeling of the body and mind. The later figurative sense, a dizzying loss of balance in judgement or circumstance, grew from that same image of the world spinning out of control.

Synonyms: dizzinesses, lightheadednesses, spins, giddinesses