When you're dizzy, you feel like the world is spinning around you or like you might lose your balance and fall down. It's that woozy, unsteady feeling you get after spinning in circles on a playground, riding a fast carnival ride, or standing up too quickly after lying down for a long time.

Your body gets dizzy when your brain receives confusing signals about balance and movement. Inside your ears, tiny structures filled with fluid help you sense which way is up and how you're moving. When these get overwhelmed (like from spinning) or disrupted (like from an ear infection), your brain can't figure out your position correctly, and you feel dizzy.

People also use dizzy to describe feeling lightheaded or faint, like when you haven't eaten in too long or you're getting sick. Sometimes dizzy describes a confused, overwhelmed feeling: a student might feel dizzy from trying to understand too many new math concepts at once.

The phrase dizzy heights describes being so high up that it makes you feel unsteady, like standing at the top of a tall building and looking down. When something happens at dizzying speed, it means so fast that it's hard to keep up with or makes your head spin just thinking about it.