NAUSEOUS

adjective Date: 1612 causing nausea or disgust ; nauseating , affected with nausea or disgust, ~ly adverb ~ness noun Usage: Those who insist that ~ can properly be used only in sense 1 and that in sense 2 it is an error for nauseated are mistaken. Current evidence shows these facts: ~ is most frequently used to mean physically affected with nausea, usually after a linking verb such as feel or become; figurative use is quite a bit less frequent. Use of ~ in sense 1 is much more often figurative than literal, and this use appears to be losing ground to nauseating. Nauseated is used more widely than ~ in sense 2.