nauseated

American  

adjective

1. affected with nausea; nauseous.

   The bumpy plane ride made me very nauseated.

2. filled with disgust.

   I feel nauseated when I read about corruption in city government.

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Usage

What does nauseated mean? To be nauseated is to have nausea—to feel sick in your stomach, as if you might vomit. The word nauseous is more commonly used to mean the same thing. Nauseated is commonly used as an adjective, but it can also be the past tense of the verb nauseate, meaning to cause to feel nausea. The adjective nauseating means causing nausea (nauseous can also be used to mean this, but that’s much less common). The word nausea can also be used in a figurative way meaning a feeling of disgust, revulsion, or repulsion, and nauseated can be used to describe people who feel this way, meaning about the same thing as disgusted, as in I feel nauseated by their cruelty. Example: I’m not sure what has made me more nauseated—the disgusting food or the server’s disgusting comments.

Commonly Confused

See nauseous.

Other Word Forms

• unnauseated
  adjective

Etymology

Origin of nauseated

First recorded in 1650–1660, for an earlier sense; nauseat(e) ( def. ) + -ed ² ( def. )

Explanation

When you're nauseated, you're queasy, or you feel like you might vomit. If you have the flu, you'll probably spend a day or two feeling nauseated. Queasy. Sick to your stomach. Barfy. All of these describe the uncomfortable feeling of being nauseated. Riding on a roller coaster three times in a row could make you feel nauseated, and if you sat down and ate an entire three-layer birthday cake by yourself, you'd definitely be nauseated by the time you finished. The Latin root word nausea originally described seasickness.

Example Sentences

Nauseated and disoriented, I groped for a light switch.

From New York Times • Apr. 4, 2017

Nauseated and disoriented, Private Yandell had quietly been struggling to drive.

From New York Times • Oct. 14, 2014

Indeed, their two-man sketch, “Waiters Who Are Nauseated by Food,” got them both their eventual jobs on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.”

From Washington Post

Nauseated with romanticism, he wrote a thousand words daily, part of a projected scheme of novels which would neither gild lilies nor avoid dung.

From Time Magazine Archive

Nauseated, I set the paper aside as the train arrived at the South Park Avenue station, the second-to-last stop.

From "The City Beautiful" by Aden Polydoros