The Word Nerd recently took an emergency first aid course held by St. John’s Ambulance. While the course was excellent the training manual left something to be desired.
The Word Nerd was so upset by something she read in the training manual that the Word Nerd Husband had to prevent her from tossing the manual off the West Coast Express.
The extensive use of “they” as a singular pronoun in the manual is enough to drive any word nerd or grammar geek batty; however, in the section on fainting, the authors make a serious error by using the word “nauseous” when they really mean “nauseated.”
If you say that you are nauseous, it means that you make other people feel sick. Example: Her workmates urged Amanda to take a shower after she ran the Vancouver marathon because she was nauseous. In other words, she smelled so strongly that she was making other people feel sick. If you say you are nauseated, it means that you feel sick to your stomach. Example: After eating some bad chicken, Mary felt nauseated.
You cannot feel nauseous – you can only feel nauseated.
Leave a comment