NAUSEOUS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does nauseous mean? 

• NAUSEOUS (adjective)
  The adjective NAUSEOUS has 2 senses:

1. causing or able to cause nausea

2. feeling nausea; feeling about to vomit

  Familiarity information: NAUSEOUS used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• NAUSEOUS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Causing or able to cause nausea

Synonyms:

loathsome; nauseating; nauseous; noisome; offensive; queasy; sickening; vile

Context example:

a sickening stench

Similar:

unwholesome (detrimental to physical or moral well-being)

Derivation:

nausea (disgust so strong it makes you feel sick)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Feeling nausea; feeling about to vomit

Synonyms:

nauseated; nauseous; queasy; sick; sickish

Similar:

ill; sick (affected by an impairment of normal physical or mental function)

Derivation:

nausea (the state that precedes vomiting)

 Context examples 

If you're about to faint, you'll feel dizzy, lightheaded, or nauseous.

(Fainting, NIH)

It was a nauseous mess,—ship’s coffee,—but the heat of it was revivifying.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

I had hardly settled in my chair before I was conscious of a thick, musky odour, subtle and nauseous.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

After the involuntary shrinking consequent on the first nauseous whiff, we one and all set about our work as though that loathsome place were a garden of roses.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

They were the first I had ever beheld, and I should have been curious enough to dissect one of them, if I had had proper instruments, which I unluckily left behind me in the ship, although, indeed, the sight was so nauseous, that it perfectly turned my stomach.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

In cancer treatment, behavior modification may be used to help patients who have become nauseous during previous cancer treatments cope with nausea they feel when they enter the therapy room to begin a new round of treatment.

(Behavior modification, NCI Dictionary)

Ravenous, and now very faint, I devoured a spoonful or two of my portion without thinking of its taste; but the first edge of hunger blunted, I perceived I had got in hand a nauseous mess; burnt porridge is almost as bad as rotten potatoes; famine itself soon sickens over it.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

When our sane and learned lunatic made that very statement of how he used to consume life, his mouth was actually nauseous with the flies and spiders which he had eaten just before Mrs. Harker entered the room.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

But the success has not hitherto been answerable, partly by some error in the quantum or composition, and partly by the perverseness of lads, to whom this bolus is so nauseous, that they generally steal aside, and discharge it upwards, before it can operate; neither have they been yet persuaded to use so long an abstinence, as the prescription requires.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Nay, but they are not to take in a decoction or in nauseous form, so you need not snub that so charming nose, or I shall point out to my friend Arthur what woes he may have to endure in seeing so much beauty that he so loves so much distort.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)