nauseous = nauseated (1885)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 16:22:09 -0500, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
wrote:

>At 1:52 AM -0500 1/8/05, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>>A usage no doubt repulsive to the John Simons and Robert Fiskes of this
>>world is the equating of "nauseous" with "nauseated" (rather than the
>>earlier sense of "nauseating").
>
>Here's the AHD4 usage note on the issue:
>==========
>Traditional critics have insisted that nauseous is properly 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 is preferred by 72 percent of the Usage
>Panel. Curiously, though, 88 percent of the Panelists prefer using
>nauseating in the sentence The children looked a little green from
>too many candy apples and nauseating (not nauseous) rides. Since
>there is a lot of evidence to show that nauseous is widely used to
>mean "feeling sick," it appears that people use nauseous mainly in
>the sense in which it is considered incorrect. In its "correct" sense
>it is being supplanted by nauseating.
>=========

In other words, "nauseous" has become a "skunked word" -- a word that has
undergone a recent semantic shift and is therefore a source of confusion
amongst those unsure of which sense is the accepted one.  Bryan A. Garner
introduced the idea of "skunked words" in his _Modern American Usage_ (I
believe "nauseous" is a prime example on his list).  Garner notes that
some anxious speakers simply avoid skunked words if the new, prevailing
usage is disparaged by prescriptivists as incorrect and the earlier usage
is no longer generally understood by anyone other than the
prescriptivists.  In the case of "nauseous", the word can be avoided
entirely because the speaker has recourse to the unambiguous choices of
"nauseated" and "nauseating".


--Ben Zimmer