nauseo

Forms

nauseō (present infinitive nauseāre, perfect active nauseāvī, supine nauseātum); first conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin nausea (“seasickness”) + -ō,^[2][3][1] The noun is borrowed from Ancient Greek ναυσία (nausía),^[2][4][1] from ναῦς (naûs, “ship”).^[1] The TLL compares the Greek verb ναυσιάω (nausiáō).^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found in Plautus' Amphitruo, where a character, just off a ship, says etiam nunc nauseo, “I am still seasick”.^[2][5]

Semantic evolution

From seasickness it was extended to any nausea: Cicero, in the Philippics and a letter, uses it of a man who belches and vomits,^[2][6] and Celsus and Juvenal of feeling sick.^[2][6] In the De natura deorum Cicero uses it figuratively of someone spewing out nonsense,^[6][2] and Phaedrus has it of feeling disgust at folly.^[6]

The TLL records a deponent form nauseor beside the active,^[3] and the OLD the spelling nausiō.^[2] In Ecclesiastical Latin it means “to vomit, be seasick”.^[7] English took the participle stem as nauseate in the 1630s.^[8]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus uses it of seasickness.^[2][5]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero uses it of nausea and, figuratively, of uttering nonsense.^[2][6][5]
• c. 15 BC–c. 50 AD – Phaedrus uses it of disgust.^[6][5]
• 1630s – English borrows the stem as nauseate.^[8]

Meanings

Verb

1. To be seasick.^[2][6]
2. To feel sick, be inclined to vomit.^[2][6]
3. (figurative) To feel disgust or loathing; to spew out (nonsense).^[2][6]

Word family

• nauseabilis
• nauseābundus
• nauseātor

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ Saalfeld, Günther Alexander (1874), Index Graecorum vocabulorum in linguam latinam translatorum, Berlin: Weidmann
5. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
8. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com