Nausea or nauseated?
nausea is a noun meaning “A feeling of illness or discomfort in the digestive system, usually…”; nauseated is an adjective meaning “Having a feeling of nausea”. Use nausea as a noun and nauseated as an adjective. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) nausea is about 13 times as common as nauseated.
What is the difference between nausea and nauseated?
| nausea | nauseated | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun | adjective, verb |
| Meaning | A feeling of illness or discomfort in the digestive system, usually characterized by a strong urge to vomit Strong dislike or disgust | Having a feeling of nausea |
| Example | He got nausea after two hours of travelling on the plane | none recorded |
| Forms | nauseas, nauseae, nauseæ | none |
| Pronunciation | /ˈnɔːzɪə/ /ˈnɔːsɪə/ /ˈnɔzi.ə/ | /ˈnɔːziˌeɪtɪd/ |
| In writing | 3.5 times per million words | about once in every 4 million words |
Sources: nausea and nauseated in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of nausea and nauseated
nausea
- 1
A feeling of illness or discomfort in the digestive system, usually characterized by a strong urge to vomit
He got nausea after two hours of travelling on the plane
- 2
Strong dislike or disgust
- 3
Motion sickness
nauseated
- 1
Having a feeling of nausea
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, nausea or nauseated?
nausea appears 3.5 times per million words; nauseated about once in every 4 million words.
nausea 3.5 times per million wordsnauseated about once in every 4 million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search nausea vs nauseated?
“nausea vs nauseated” is searched about 20 times a month on Bing (Google reports it together with close variants, so it has no figure of its own) in the United States.
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.