nausea
/ˈnɔːsɪə
/ /ˈnɔːzɪə/noun [mass noun]
1A feeling of sickness with an inclination to vomit: a wave of nausea engulfed him...
- Only a few patients experienced postoperative nausea, so any statistical evaluation would be meaningless.
- Cancer chemotherapy can cause severe nausea, vomiting, and abdominal discomfort, which can limit therapy.
- Side effects of metformin include mild nausea, diarrhoea, and abdominal bloating.
Synonyms
sickness, biliousness, queasiness;
vomiting, retching, gagging;
travel-sickness, seasickness, carsickness, airsickness, motion sickness, morning sickness, altitude sickness
informal throwing up, puking
rare qualms
1.1A feeling of loathing or disgust: the stories will launch a wave of public nausea and outrage...
- His government could scarcely bring itself to mention the word ' traditional ' without suffering acute political nausea.
Synonyms
disgust, revulsion, repugnance, repulsion, distaste, aversion, loathing, abhorrence, detestation, odium
informal yuck factor
archaic disrelish
Origin
Late Middle English: via Latin from Greek nausia, from naus 'ship'.
Nausea originally meant ‘seasickness’ and is based on the Greek word naus, ‘ship’ also the source of the English word nautical (mid 16th century). Noise (Middle English) also comes from nausea—as it developed through Latin and early French, nausea took on a series of meanings that went from ‘seasickness’ to ‘upset, malaise’, and ‘disturbance, uproar’, and so to ‘noise’, which was the word's spelling and meaning when it first appeared in medieval English.