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. )
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
By the end, both of us felt slightly nauseated, though not by the food.
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 13, 2026
People who were nauseated by the drugs were more likely to report increased food waste.
From Science Daily • Nov. 21, 2024
The effect can be vertiginous—so the way people avoid being nauseated is by trying to ignore the dissonance.
From Salon • May 29, 2024
That seepage has fueled bacteria growth within the Sylmar landfill, giving rise to putrid odors that have nauseated students and staff at a local elementary school.
From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 12, 2023
Most walked around in a state of critical dehydration and malnutrition and as a result were irritable, volatile, light-headed, bleary, nauseated, gaunt, and crampy.
From "Seabiscuit: An American Legend" by Laura Hillenbrand
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
