nauseous
Often confused with nauseated
- 1Feeling sick to the stomach, as though one might vomit.
Some patients feel nauseous for a day or two after the anesthetic wears off.
The ferry rolled so badly that half the passengers were nauseous before we left the harbor.
Similarqueasy, sick, nauseated
Note
Here the word describes how a person feels, and that use is disputed. Some careful writers hold that it should mean only causing sickness: a smell is nauseous, the person smelling it is not. Yet people have felt nauseous in print since at least 1848, and the phrase is ordinary in a newspaper such as The Guardian; in formal writing, feel sick or nauseated avoids the objection.
- 2Causing nausea, or offensive enough to sicken or disgust.
A nauseous smell of rotting fish drifted up from the docks.
The senator's nauseous flattery of his donors embarrassed even his own staff.
Similarnauseating, sickening, revolting, disgusting, repulsive
Note
The older and etymological sense: Latin nauseōsus meant "causing nausea." Writers soon stretched it from smells and tastes to conduct, so Jonathan Swift's flattery comes "tipt with nauseous fleer" and Byron calls Martial's epigrams nauseous. Said of behavior, it is a strong word of moral disgust, and Hester Thrale Piozzi pairs it naturally with offensive.
- 3Prone to nausea; sickly or squeamish by nature.
Note
A use that has died out: it described a person easily turned sick, a matter of temperament rather than of the moment, much as sickly or squeamish do. A reader meeting it in older writing should not take it as feeling sick right then. For the same idea today, squeamish is the natural word, whether the trigger is blood or rough water.
Practice
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Origin
From Latin nauseōsus ("causing nausea"); in English terms, nausea + -ous.