Word Choice: Nauseous vs. Nauseated

Does having your grammar corrected make you queasy? And more importantly, from a proofreading point of view, does that mean it makes you ‘nauseous’ or ‘nauseated’?

Well, if pedantry does make you feel ill, it’s time to grab a sick bag: things are about to get stomach-churning as we take a look at the differences between these words.

Nauseous (Causing Sickness or Disgust)

Traditionally, ‘nauseous’ described something that causes sickness or disgust. This can be something that literally makes you feel sick:

He’s good at grammar, but he gives off a nauseous smell.

Or more figurative, such as in:

He’s a nice person, except his nauseous habit of correcting people.

But over the last fifty years or so, ‘nauseous’ has commonly been used to mean ‘feeling sick’:

I feel nauseous every time he corrects someone for no reason.

Some people still insist this is wrong, but it’s now widely accepted in most contexts. The main exceptions to this are fields like medicine, where the technical distinction is more important.

Nauseated (Feeling Sick or Disgusted)

‘Nauseated’ is far less confusing, simply meaning ‘afflicted with nausea’. As such, if we were feeling disgusted about something, we might say:

Listening to him going on about grammar left me nauseated.

This applies whatever the context, even in a medical setting:

The patient reported being nauseated after speaking to a proofreader.

Nauseous, Nauseated or Nauseating?

Both ‘nauseous’ and ‘nauseated’ are commonly used to mean ‘feeling sick’. But it’s important not to mix these terms up in some contexts, such as medicine.

In these cases, you should use ‘nauseous’ to mean ‘causing sickness or disgust’, while using ‘nauseated’ to mean ‘feeling sick or disgusted’.

Luckily, there is an alternative to ‘nauseous’ that avoids ambiguity: nauseating. This also means ‘causing sickness or disgust’ and doesn’t have a secondary meaning. Remember:

Nauseous = Causing sickness (formal) or feeling sick (informal)

Nauseated = Feeling sick or disgusted

Nauseating = Causing sickness or disgust