Nauseatingly nauseous

Every time someone says "I am nauseous" I want to throw up. So I thought a blog post might help.

In medical school I was taught:

• nauseous = inducing nausea
• nauseated = feeling nausea

For example, 

• I swallowed a gulp of the soured, curdled milk before noticing the nauseous odor.
• The sour milk made me nauseated. It nauseated me.

I wouldn't worry too much about the distinctions, though, since dictionaries indicate that nauseous and nauseated can be used interchangeably. In fact, common usage favors the incorrect meanings. Most people would say,

• "We threw out the nauseating curdled milk." (Proper: "We threw out the nauseous curdled milk.")  
• "The milk made me nauseous." (Proper: "The milk made me nauseated.")

If you are particular about words and want to be faithful to the original meanings, Garner's Modern American Usage offers this sentence to help keep them straight: What is nauseous makes one feel nauseated.

Here's a trick I made up to help you remember which is which: If you are nauseated, you can't eat.

And what, pray tell, does this all have to do with Healthy Survivorship? For most people, not much. But I am fascinated by words, the tools of my trade. So learning or sharing what I've learned makes me happy and thus helps me live as fully as possible.

Comments

[kate]

Amen.

[Polly Leshan]

Thank you, thank you. Now , how about a treatise on lie and lay? It made my day when my granddaughter, in kindergarten at the time, came home sputtering because the nurse at her doctor's office had told her to LAY down on the examining table...

I am always grateful for what you write. Polly