Nauseated or nauseous?
nauseated is an adjective meaning “Having a feeling of nausea”; nauseous is an adjective meaning “Causing nausea; sickening or disgusting”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) nauseous is about 4.5 times as common as nauseated.
What is the difference between nauseated and nauseous?
| nauseated | nauseous | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | adjective, verb | adjective |
| Meaning | Having a feeling of nausea | Causing nausea; sickening or disgusting proscribedAfflicted with nausea; sick |
| Example | none recorded | none recorded |
| Pronunciation | /ˈnɔːziˌeɪtɪd/ | /ˈnɔːziːəs/ /ˈnɔːsiːəs/ /ˈnɔʃəs/ |
| In writing | about once in every 4 million words | 1.2 times per million words |
Sources: nauseated and nauseous 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 nauseated and nauseous
nauseated
- 1
Having a feeling of nausea
nauseous
- 1
Causing nausea; sickening or disgusting
- 2
proscribedAfflicted with nausea; sick
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, nauseated or nauseous?
nauseated appears about once in every 4 million words; nauseous 1.2 times per million words.
nauseated about once in every 4 million wordsnauseous 1.2 times per 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 nauseated vs nauseous?
“nauseated vs nauseous” is searched about 6,600 times a month on Google and 170 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“nauseous vs nauseated”, “nauseated or nauseous”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.