vertigo

Comedy in a Minor Keyを読んでいます。ドイツ語からの翻訳本のせいか余り難しい単語はでてきませんが、今日取り上げる単語は難しそうな単語です。
The whole time he was hidden in her house she thought she understood better and better - understood both him and the other thing that stood behind him, invisible, which he embodied - until at last, alone in his room, she got to what was behind his secret too. But now it seemed different to her, as though she herself had entered into this secret in a new way. And she remembered having seen, every once in a while, a flitting in his eyes as though dogs were hounding him. When she walked up to the closed window and looked steeply down into the little back garden, she was overcome by a kind of vertigo. She leaned her forehead against the glass to feel some support. It started in her eyes, a strange, particular turning and pulling that gradually sucked her whole body into the whirlpool as though she were losing consciousness, while at the same time fear rose within her.
"vertigo" を辞書で調べます。
・Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary: a : a sensation of motion in which the individual or the individual's surroundings seem to whirl dizzily b : a dizzy confused state of mind
・Cambridge English Dictionary: a feeling of spinning round and being unable to balance, caused by looking down from a height: She can't stand heights and has always suffered from vertigo.
・Vocabulary.com: If you're standing still but the room is inexplicably spinning, you might want to let someone know you're suffering from vertigo - the sensation of dizziness or whirling.
Vocabulary.comは大抵の場合更に詳しい説明があり、この単語も例外ではありません。
Contrary to popular belief, vertigo is not exactly the same thing as acrophobia, the fear of heights. However, acrophobia can result in the symptoms associated with vertigo. Interestingly, when legendary director Alfred Hitchcock created a film about a detective with an intense fear of heights, he named the film Vertigo, not Acrophobia; perhaps he thought Vertigo was catchier.
Example of vertigo:
Large doses produce vertigo, nausea and paralysis; but in smaller quantities, administered by skilful hands, it has a sedative action on the nerves.