Word Pet Peeve: Nauseated vs. Nauseous

[annundriel]

When you feel sick to your stomach, about to vomit, you feel nauseated.

When something is nauseous, it causes nausea.

If you feel nauseous, you are essentially saying you cause other people nausea.

Thank you, Dr. McD, for explaining the difference so clearly back in school.

ETA: Usage note from my dictionary, The American Heritage Collage Dictionary, Fourth Edition:

Traditional critics have insisted that nauseous is appropriately used only to mean "causing nausea" and that it is incorrect to use it to mean "affected with nausea," as in Roller coasters make me nauseous. In this example, nauseated was preferred by 61 percent of the Usage Panel in the 1999 survey. Curiously, though, only 24 percent of the Panelists preferred using nauseous in the sentence The children looked a little green from too many candy apples and nauseous rides. Since there is a lot of evidence to show that nauseous is widely used to mean "feeling sick," it appears that people using nauseous mainly in the sense in which it is considered incorrect. In its "correct" sense it is being supplanted by nauseating.

Comments

[marynyu.livejournal.com]

LOL! I remember Sheldon Cooper explaining the same thing in this one Big Bang Theory episode. As a native-spanish speaking person, I found it quite interesting/useful back then too.

[annundriel.livejournal.com]

English is such a ridiculous language. I mean, I love it because it's ridiculous but phew.

I always think language idiosyncracies are interesting from non-native speaking perspectives. Like the "el/la/los/las" differentiations.

[marynyu.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I guess it is weird. We grow up learning that some nouns are either "male" or "female", when it doesn't really make much sense. I mean, sometimes it does: the sun is male (el), and the moon is female (la), wich makes sense in a way. But then cars are male, music is female, food is female, work is male, a house is female, but a home is male, a train or bus is male.... I guess for someone who speaks english and doesn't even think about it, it must be weird to get used to saying "la casa" or "el bus". XD

I actually like english a lot, it is weird but fun!! I still love poetry in spanish though, it lends itself to some incredibly beautiful imaginery.

[annundriel.livejournal.com]

That was the one thing about Spanish that always tripped me up a little in classes (also not being able to roll my r's on command; if I've got a sentence going I'm almost okay). Some nouns made total sense when it came to male/female and some just...seemed random. Until you learned which they were, you had a 50/50 chance of getting it right or sounding silly.

Poetry in Spanish is lovely.