Nauseous vs. Nauseated: If you're feeling nauseous, don't come near me!

posted 2000-May-1

Another pedantic rant (brought to my attention by my erudite sister Chandra). So often people see something gross, start feeling sick, and say, "Oh my, I feel nauseous!"

When one feels like vomiting, one feels NAUSEATED. When something causes nausea, that thing is said to be NAUSEOUS. The American Heritage English Dictionary sez:

nauseous: Causing nausea; sickening
nauseated: To be feeling, or having been caused to feel nausea.

So, next time you are tempted to say "I feel nauseous", understand that you are saying "I feel that I make other people sick", or basically "I feel nauseating".

Not that it's never correct to say "I feel nauseous". For example, if you fell in a pile of human entrails and got up with various bits of human anatomy draped around your body, you would probably be correct in calling yourself nauseous. (But you'd probably also be nauseated, and I suspect your pending loss of lunch would still be the emotion you'd want to describe instead of caring how you made other people feel.)

In writing this rant, I looked up the actual definitions above, and in doing so found this Usage Note:

Traditional critics have insisted that nauseous is appropriately used only to mean "causing nausea" and that it is incorrect to use it to mean "affected with nausea," as in Roller coasters make me nauseous. In this example, nauseated is preferred by 72 percent of the Usage Panel. What is curious, however, is that 88 percent of the Panelists indicated that they would prefer nauseating in the sentence The children looked a little green from too many candy apples and nauseous rides. Thus it appears that like a handful of other words such as transpire, nauseous is actively used mainly in the sense in which it is considered incorrect.

While the use of nauseous to mean "affected with nausea" may incur critical displeasure, it should be pointed out in its defense not only that it is quite common among educated speakers but that it is subtly distinct from nauseated in this sense. Nauseated is a passive participle, and hence suggests a condition induced by a specific external cause. By contrast, nauseous is an adjective that refers to an occurrent state whose cause may be nonspecific or unknown. The person to reports that I woke up this morning feeling nauseous might not be willing to accept that he or she had been nauseated by any external agent.

To that, I say phah! Rest assured that I'll still look cross-eyed at you if you use nauseous in this sense, and further I will, with a concerned demeanor, press quite fully to discover the cause of your nausea. So don't think you can hide your wicked ways from me with semantics! :P

Footnote: in leafing through the dictionary, I discovered a word with fascinating spelling--phthisic. Look it up yourself (and all its phth brethren, like phthiriasis).

Dain Kistner 10:20AM ET 2000-May-02	Go get em, Gav! Let's stomp out...er...stamp out...er...eliminate bad grammar once and for all! :P
Gavin Kistner 09:14PM ET 2003-Jan-30	Just thought I'd link to another site discussing this issue, generally saying "technically shmechnically...it's been around long enough it's acceptable.
Kevin Baird 03:59PM ET 2005-Mar-10	I suggest looing at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescription_and_description for the difference between prescriptive and descriptive grammar. Most linguists think prescriptive grammar is at best misguided. There is little conceptual difference between objecting to the use of nauseous to mean 'filled with a feeling of nausea' and thinking that French is 'incorrect' Latin. To be consistent, you should stop using Norman-derived vocabulary when speaking English. You should also add real cases back in (like our other Germanic language siblings). All of these changes were probably objected to by prescriptivists of those times. Languages change just as species do. When is a perfectly natural language change old enough to be 'acceptable'?
Josh Paul 03:46PM ET 2012-Mar-03	Not a big fan of grammarians, in person, that is. Very tough people to be around, as they are usually correcting everything and can’t seem to relax. However, they are very good as online resources, helping me, greatly, with my writing endeavors. Thank you for clearly defining nauseous and nauseated. I have been struggling with that one for a while now.
Kate 04:34PM ET 2012-Mar-22	Only Americans use the English language so badly, let’s be honest here. I have American friends and believe me people, it’s a lost cause. You just have to relax and open your mind a bit and maybe, just maybe, concern yourself with more important things.
Ee 12:51AM ET 2012-Mar-23	I agree that ‘nauseated’ and ‘nauseating’ mean what you say they mean. But if soooo many people use nauseous as if to mean nauseated, don’t you think ‘nauseous’ also means nauseated? In fact, a number of dictionaries, including this one (dictionary.com): nauseous.adjective 1.affected with nausea; nauseated: to feel nauseous. 2.causing nausea; sickening; nauseating. 3.disgusting; loathsome: a nauseous display of greed. use it to mean both things. Context makes it clear which meaning is implied in most cases, and the double meaning is always helpful in making a witty pun.
Phil 03:35PM ET 2012-Apr-01	Well I suggest you look at the following as it appears that it is possible to use the word nauseous to mean that you feel sick as well as causing nausea. nauseous [ˈnɔːzɪəs -sɪəs] adj 1. feeling sick 2. (Medicine) causing nausea 3. distasteful to the mind or senses; repulsive nauseously adv nauseousness n Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003 Adj. 1. nauseous - causing or able to cause nausea; “a nauseating smell”; “nauseous offal”; “a sickening stench” loathsome, nauseating, noisome, queasy, sickening, vile, offensive unwholesome - detrimental to physical or moral well-being; “unwholesome food”; “unwholesome habits like smoking” nauseous - feeling nausea; feeling about to vomit nauseated, sickish, queasy, sick ill, sick - affected by an impairment of normal physical or mental function; “ill from the monotony of his suffering” Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2011 Princeton University, Farlex Inc. Adj. 1. nauseous - causing or able to cause nausea; “a nauseating smell”; “nauseous offal”; “a sickening stench” loathsome, nauseating, noisome, qIueasy, sickening, vile, offensive unwholesome - detrimental to physical or moral well-being; “unwholesome food”; “unwholesome habits like smoking” nauseous - feeling nausea; feeling about to vomit nauseated, sickish, queasy, sick ill, sick - affected by an impairment of normal physical or mental function; “ill from the monotony of his suffering” Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2011 Princeton University, Farlex Inc. and nauseous adjective 1. sick, green, ill, unwell, nauseated, queasy, bilious, crook (Austral. & N.Z. informal) The drugs make me feel nauseous. sickening, offensive, disgusting, revolting, distasteful, repulsive, nauseating, repugnant, loathsome, abhorrent, detestable, yucky or yukky (slang) The floor was deep with bat dung giving off a nauseous smell. Collins Thesaurus of the English Language – Complete and Unabridged 2nd Edition. 2002 © HarperCollins Publishers 1995, 2002 So I would suggest you all get your facts right before jumping on your high horse.
Ray 04:07AM ET 2012-Apr-04	I agree with Phil and having studied linguistics in multiple languages, I would disagree with your definition of the difference (you aren’t right, but you are only half wrong). Nausea comes from the Latin word nausea and Greek word nausia meaning, seasickness. It can mean both, I feel nauseous means I feel sick or I feel nauseating (as in what you described), that’s the wonderful thing about English adjectives- they are ridiculously ambiguous. Sometimes the world isn’t so black and white.
Lucy 11:34AM ET 2012-Apr-12	Thanks for clarifying this. I am editing a book and it needs to be grammatically accurate, so I appreciate your commentary on this topic! It was my first Google hit.
Caey 07:33AM ET 2012-May-04	Does anyone know what the webster dictionary definition for nauseous is? As that is the only one that really counts (JK). But honestly, I think people tend to focus too much on the way someone says something as opposed to what they are saying. Now its one thing if they are way off base and you just cant make heads or tails of what they are saying, but if its obvious what they are saying, dont derail the conversation just so you can make yourself feel more important for 2 minutes. This of course tends to happen more often in text than in actual conversation, and when you grief someone for that, you are a common troll. When you do it it verbal conversation, you are just a jerk.
Dana 12:31PM ET 2012-May-10	This is terrific! Thanks!