| 词组 | nauseous, nauseating, nauseated |
| 释义 | nauseous, nauseating, nauseated Behind the intense, though relatively recent, controversy over these words is a persistent belief, dear to the hearts of many American commentators, that nauseous has but a single sense: "causing nausea." There is, however, no basis for this belief. The OED lists three senses of nauseous that have been in existence since the 17th century. The focus of the controversy is a sense of nauseous meaning "affected by nausea, feeling sick to one's stomach" that seems to have arisen shortly after World War II, undoubtedly in speech first. (Harper 1975, 1985 suspects it arose in the Bronx or Brooklyn.) It first came to our attention in 1949 in a letter to the editor of a periodical: • SIR: One of the minor crosses which any physician has to bear is the experience of hearing patient after patient say, "Doctor, I am nauseous." ... If the distinction I am making is not clear to you, may I point out that "nauseous" implies the quality of inducing nausea and that the person or animal in whom this sensation is induced is nauseated —Deborah C. Leary, M.D., Saturday Rev., 4 June 1949 Dr. Leary was objecting to a similar use in an earlier Saturday Review article; before her objection we have no record of anyone's having made such a distinction, nor had we noticed in print the usage to which she objected. But by 1954 Theodore Bernstein had noticed it (Winners & Sinners, 28 Apr. 1954), and he reprinted the notice in Bernstein 1958. From this modest beginning, nauseous has become a standard entry in American usage books. We have found the subject discussed in more than 20 of them. But we have found it in only one British book, Bryson 1984, and Bryson is himself an American by birth. He cites Bernstein. Dr. Leary's prescription is to use nauseated for "experiencing nausea" and nauseous for "causing nausea," and her prescription is repeated by almost all the subsequent usage books. A further concern is added by Perrin & Ebbitt 1972 and Ebbitt & Ebbitt 1982—the possibility that the use of nauseous to mean "sick" might be ambiguous to someone who had grown up with the distinction. But ambiguity is not a real problem. When nauseous means "sick," it is used in a restricted set of sentence patterns; when it means "disgusting" or "causing nausea," it is used in different patterns. Writers for the mass media who pretend to misunderstand common uses of the "sick" meaning show that they have not observed the difference in the patterns. When nauseous means "sick," it is regularly used as a predicate adjective following a linking verb such as be, feel, become, or grow. The subject of the verb is of necessity always personal. (Use of this sense is generally literal but may occasionally be figurative, as in the last of this group of examples.) • But the heavy bread, the tepid meat, made him begin to feel nauseous —James Baldwin, Another Country, 1962 • Dr. Gordon I. Kaye, a Columbia scientist ... said "two persons who tried the filter had allergic reactions and a third became nauseous." — Wall Street Jour., 21 June 1968 • ... drugs of various kinds to keep their Cosmonauts from becoming disoriented or growing nauseous — Engineering Opportunities, January 1968 • When a cat is nauseous, it will often drool —Robert K. Lynch, B.S., V.M.D., Cats Mag., February 1973 • ... soaking wet, and nauseous from the tossing of the wind-whipped water —Herman Wouk, Marjorie Morningstar, 1955 • ... some people were getting nauseous —Ira Flatow, PBS broadcast of "All Things Considered," 19 Jan. 1983 • Sexism pervades every song these guys have written, so much so that looking at that fresh, innocent young woman's face on the cover of... but the little girls understand is enough to make you nauseous —Dave Marsh, Rolling Stone, 3 Apr. 1980 When nauseous means "causing nausea, nauseating" in a literal sense it is seldom used with a personal subject. It is also much more often used as an attributive adjective—in front of the noun it modifies—than as a predicate adjective: • ... sucked in the sides of his mouth so he would not taste the nauseous alcohol —Donald Windham, The Dog Star, 1950 • After the involuntary shrinking consequent on the first nauseous whiff —Bram Stoker, Dracula, 1897 • ... clouds of nauseous fumes —William Beebe, Jungle Peace, 1918 • ... dangling over the nauseous water on which bobbed craft —Elizabeth Bowen, The Little Girls, 1964 • ... the sickly sweet smell which makes the neighbourhood of the leper nauseous —W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence, 1919 But even more important to remember than the differing syntactic patterns is that when nauseous means "nauseating" it is most likely to be used figuratively and not literally. This figurative use has a curious origin. It began in the second half of the 17th century (the OED's first citation is dated 1663). Wyld 1920 noted that nauseous and filthy (and fulsome too) were favorite count-erwords during the Restoration period, used as generalized expressions of abuse or disapproval. This use often does appear with personal subjects and after linking verbs. But you will note that confusion with nauseous "sick"—even from our modern perspective—is not possible. • ... and modesty is a kind of a youthful dress which, as it makes a young woman more amiable, makes an old one more nauseous —William Wycherly, dedication, The Plain Dealer, 1676 • I hate that nauseous fool, you know I do —George Etherege, The Man of Mode, 1676 • Sure, whilst I was but a knight, I was a very nauseous fellow—Sir John Vanbrugh, The Relapse, 1696 • You would be as nauseous to the ladies as one of the old patriarchs, if you used that obsolete expression —George Farquhar, Love and a Bottle, 1698 • This use of the figurative nauseous—applied to persons—seems to have pretty much died out with the 17th century. But figurative use applied to other things was equally common then and has continued right into the 20th century. • I confess I have not been sneering fulsome Lies and nauseous Flattery —William Congreve, The Old Bachelor, 1693 • Fanatick Preaching ... in such a dirty, nauseous Style, as to be well resembled to Pilgrims Salve — Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub, 1710 • Pray, Mr. Wild, none of this nauseous behaviour — Henry Fielding, Jonathan Wild, 1743 • ... which in itself is a very insignificant one, quite nauseous and contemptible —Baker 1770 • ... when it was requisite to administer a corrective dose to the nation, Robespierre was found; a most foul and nauseous dose indeed —W. M. Thackeray, The Book of Snobs, 1846 • ... either of studied antiquarianism or nauseous pedantry —Fitzedward Hall 1873 • ... most evident and nauseous in the worst play which Ford himself ever wrote —T. S. Eliot, "John Ford," in Selected Essays, 1932 • ... the Government is guilty of nauseous hypocrisy —New Statesman & Nation, 21 Nov. 1953 • ... rebuked Rochester for his ribald and nauseous songs —James Sutherland, English Literature of the Late Seventeenth Century, 1969 • ... an addict friend, who exposes the nauseous act of shooting up —Annie Gottlieb, N. Y. Times Book Rev., 16 June 1974 In present-day use, however, the "nauseating" sense of nauseous is becoming harder to find. The literal use has dropped off markedly since about 1920 and even the figurative use is dwindling. The cause of the decline seems to be that nauseating itself is taking over both of these uses. Here is the literal sense: • ... a scent, either natural or artificial, may fascinate certain individuals and may be nauseating to others —A. Hyatt Verrill, "Perfumes Past and Present," 1940, in Antaeus, Spring/Summer 1976 • I especially hated the cod liver oil, a nauseating goo tasting of raw liquefied fish —Russell Baker, Growing Up, 1982 Nauseating is considerably more frequent in figurative use, however: • Anything more nauseating she could not conceive. Prayer at this hour with that woman —Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, 1925 • ... there isn't a single thinker of the first eminence, and I seem to have ploughed through reams of nauseating adulation —Harold J. Laski, letter, 10 Nov. 1925 • Of course I condemned the nauseating combination of brutality and deceit in Frederick II and Bismarck —Albert Guérard, Education of a Humanist, 1949 • Chamberlain's obsequiousness, his exaggerated flattery, in these letters can be nauseating —William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, 1960 • ... that most nauseating of modern vices, self-pity —Pauline Clark, Times Literary Supp., 2 Apr. 1971 • The pomposity and self-satisfied moral rectitude of those bent on prosecution is, however, quite nauseating —J. H. Plumb, N.Y. Times Book Rev., 5 Sept. 1976 • ... in which he deplored political corruption, the high crime rate, and the luxury of contemporary London, which he affected to find nauseating —Paul Fussell, Samuel Johnson and the Life of Writing, 1971 The most telling evidence of the growing preference for nauseating may come from E. B. White. In Strunk & White 1979, the third edition, White entered for the first time a warning on nauseous: • Nauseous. Nauseated. The first means "sickening to contemplate"; the second means "sick at the stomach." But on page 72 of the same edition he wrote: • Rich, ornate prose is hard to digest, generally unwholesome, and sometimes nauseating. Nauseated, prescribed by many usage books in place of nauseous, is less frequently used than either nauseous or nauseating. It has some figurative use: • ... that famous, if dangerous, charm of his, nauseated as we may be by the excesses into which it so often misled him —John Mason Brown, Saturday Rev., 20 May 1950 • ... the propaganda lies about the Czech treatment of the Sudeten Germans ... made me even more nauseated —William L. Shirer, The Nightmare Years, 1984 But most of its use is literal: • A baby who gets too much to eat may become nauseated —Morris Fishbein, The Popular Medical Encyclopedia, 1946 • Nauseated with pain, Armitage roused himself — Jean Stafford, The Mountain Lion, 1947 • One did mention a patient who saw the movie and became nauseated —Hollis Alpert, Saturday Rev., 15 June 1974 • ... was dizzy and nauseated when he penciled in the river that bears his name —Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Days, 1985 There is a little evidence that nauseous and nauseated may be heading toward differentiation in their literal uses. In the PBS broadcast cited above, Ira Flatow did not go on to say that any of the passengers who felt nauseous actually became sick. Many of the citations we have for nauseous similarly connote that queasy feeling, not actual sickness. • ... he munched some treated corn. After some observation, the bereft farmer relaxed; Harriman felt slightly nauseous for two days —Jake Page, Science 81, April 1981 • Suddenly, one of the contestants stepped back and shouted, Holy , I broke his arm! I got nauseous —Melvin Durslag, TV Guide, 20 Mar. 1981 But a number of citations for nauseated suggest actual sickness: • During the first three months of pregnancy, she may be nauseated, vomit often —"M", The Sensuous Man, 1971 • He spent the next 10 days in a hospital, nauseated, literally wanting to die —Rick Telander, Sports Illustrated, 28 Feb. 1983 • Chemotherapy and radiation help her toward remission, but they bald her skull and blast her mind, leaving her nauseated and irritable —Brina Caplan, N. Y. Times Book Rev., 28 Nov. 1982 The evidence so far is only suggestive. Whether differentiation will continue on these lines remains to be seen. Conclusion: At present, nauseous is most often used as a predicate adjective meaning "nauseated" literally; it has some figurative use as well. Usage writers decry these developments of the last 40 years, but they are now standard in general prose. The older sense of nauseous meaning "nauseating," both literal and figurative, seems to be in decline, being replaced by nauseating. Nauseated is usually literal, but is less common than nauseous. Any handbook that tells you that nauseous cannot mean "nauseated" is out of touch with the contemporary language. In current use it seldom means anything else. |
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