N.A. is the urge to vomit without any cause.

I had sex problems. No way to do anything to stop nausea.

Nauseated is the verb meaning to be affected with nausea.

I feel really nauseating all of sudden in my lower stomach.

What is nausea?

I have a fever and this smell was really nauseating.

Nauseous is the odd one, which can mean either ‘nauseated’ or ‘nauseating’. Does Merriam Webster’s usage notes affirm that nauseous can properly be used only in sense 1 and that in sense 2 it is an error for nauseated? Current evidence shows these facts: nauseous is most commonly used to mean physically, physically affected with nausea, usu. after a linking verb such as feel or become; figurative uses are quite a bit less frequent. The use of nauseous in sense 1 is much more often figurative than literal, and this use appears to be losing ground to nauseating. How do nauseate and ausuate seem?

Where can I find out about what is there to know or to understand?

My mother made me his daily jokes, savagement, and nauseous.

I love it! You need to read them or do it, and yes, you’ve got to. As late as the Sixth Collegiate (1949), MW’s entry for nauseous has just one definition:

nauseous adj. What are some drugs that cause nausea or you are fitted to cause nausea?

This is the sixth philological college (The Sixth) MW’s first colloquial dictionary until 1963 (my copy is copyrighted 1959). For the Seventh Collegiate (1963) contains a radically altered the entry for nauseous :

nauseous adj. 1 : Nauseated 2 : causing nausea : Sickening

not only does nauseous as “nauseated” make its debut in the Seventh Collegiate, but it occupies the first (that, chronologically earlier) meaning of the word, bumping nauseous as “nauseating” to the second slot in the entry.

In the Eighth Collegiate (1973), Merriam-Webster reverses its predecessor’s judgment about which meaning has historical priority, shifting nauseous as the first (earlier) position: nauseous adj

1: causing nausea : sickening 2 : affected with nausea or disgust The other significant

change in the Eighth Collegiate’s treatment of nauseous is its replacement of the one-word definition “NAUSEATED” with a five-word descriptive definition. The seventh Collegiate equated nauseous in that sense with nauseated it didn’t define the latter word; instead readers were left to surmise the meaning of nauseated from the dictionary’s three-definition entry for nauseate : nauseate vt

1: to become affected with nausea 2: to feel disgust vi : to affect with nausea or disgust In the absence of

a separate entry for nauseated —and given that the verb nauseate had the past-t

One point that frequently goes unnoticed in discussions of nauseous is that, all along, the verb nauseate could be understood in both the “cause nausea” sense and “feel nausea” sense. The Sixth Collegiate (for example) has this entry for the verb:

nauseate v.t. & i. To cause or become affected with nausea.

The Ninth Collegiate (1983)—the edition that introduced the first-occurrence date feature in its word entries—tinkered with the first definition of nauseous, but not with the second: nauseous

adj 1612 1 : causing nausea or disgust : NAUSEATING 2 : affected with nausea or disgust The

Ninth Collegiate also marks the appearance of the first version of the usage note that Lynn quotes in another answer to this question. But if Lynn has any history to prove Here is how an initial usage note MW words:

usage Those who insist that nauseous can properly be used only in sense 1 are in error. Current evidence shows these facts: nauseous is most frequently used to mean physically affected with nausea; extended use is quite a bit less frequent. The use of nauseous is more often figurative than literal, and this use appears to be losing ground for nauseating. See also nauseous in sense 2. Is nauseated a bad idea?

In the Tenth Collegiate (1993) the definitions of nauseous are identical to those in the Ninth Collegiate. The usage note, however, shows some significant alterations (rendered in bold below):

usage Those who insist that nauseous can properly be used only in sense 1 and that in sense 2 it is an error for nauseated are mistaken. Which word for nausea (from history) is most often used to mean physically affected by nausea, and all that current evidence shows. After a linking verb such as feel or become; figurative use is quite a bit less frequent. Use of nauseous in sense 1 is much more often figurative than literal, and this use appears to be losing ground to nauseating. Why nauseous and nauseous is common even though not uncommon by the modern standards. A case of nauseated versus nauseous.

That is why the Eleventh Collegiate (2003) retains the nineth Collegiate’s definitions unchanged. But it, too, systematically revises the usage note. In this case the few but crucial changes occur in the final sentence of the note (again rendered in bold below):

usage Those who insist that nauseous can properly be used nure 1 and that in sense 2 it is an error for nauseated are mistaken. What is used to be nauseous corresponding to usu? In figurative systems, after a link verb such as feel or become a bit less frequent. Use of the term “nauseous to people with abdominal pain” in sense 3 is much more often figurative than literal, and this use appears to be losing ground to nauseating. Nauseated can be used in more nauseous sense 2. In sense 2, it’s not just about the feeling of being pushed too hard as it comes up with a stronger pressure.

Over a period of about 65 years, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary series doesn’t just record (in the seventh Collegiate) a shift from nauseous defined as having only the meaning “Causing, or fitted to cause, nausea; disgusting” to nauseous having two meanings: “causing nausea or disgust” and “affected with nausea or disgust. Why is the word nauseated a synonym for nauseous, and not nauseating in the sense of “disgusting”? On

this record, it appears that the emergence of nauseous as “nauseated” in a sphere previously occupied solely by nauseous as “nauseating” led to a significant level of user flight away from the use of nauseous to indicate either sense of the word, in favor of words ( nauseating and nauseated ), perceived to be completely unambiguous. Whether nauseated is in fact technically unambiguous is debatable, but in popular usage I’ve never heard anyone say, for example, “The food was so nauseated that I couldn’t eat it, but I am not using it anymore”. What

the Ngram Results say An

Ngram chart over the years 1800–2005 for nauseate (blue line), nauseated (red line), nauseating (green line), and nauseous (yellow line) tells a somewhat different story. Most

notable here is the steady but cumulatively severe decline in the frequency of nauseous from 1800 or so until about 1940, followed by a flattening out over the next 40 years and a slight rise since 1980. Tightly bunched with nauseous in the results for the period from 1920 to 2005 are nauseating and nauseated, while nauseate remains far less common than the other three words.

“I think the most striking thing about the Ngram results for 1949–2003 is how flat everything

generally is: It’s rather astonishing that during this period (in the United States) a revolution in the accepted meaning of nauseous occurred”. On the portion of the chart representing those years, an observer would probably conclude that nothing much had been nauseous for most of that interval of time.

Conclusions

Today nauseous has two meanings: the old one (“sickening”) that many people have stopped using nauseous to signify, preferring instead to use the unambiguous word nauseating ; and the newer one (“made sick”) that many people do use nauseous to signify but that others now prefer to use the effectively unambiguous word nauseated to signify. (review) The history of nauseous thus illustrates how a language sometimes adapts, shifts, or reverses the meaning of longtime words, and how we as scientists and speakers sometimes respond to ambiguity with further changes in

word choice and usage.