Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Grammar Gaffe of the Week: Nauseated/Nauseous


I love grammar. And I love to speak and hear correct grammar. It concerns me that many grammar mistakes are becoming commonplace. (**Note: No, it isn't incorrect to start a sentence with a conjunction.)

I want to help people learn correct grammar usage and use this blog as my platform to teach it. I’m not always going to explain the rules, which can often be confusing and hard to remember, but I’d like to give simple ways to remember the correct usage.

I’m not grammatically correct 100% of the time, but I usually know what “sounds right” more than I remember each rule. It helps me to hear the correct usage over and over.

Each week I hope to have a new grammar gaffe with examples of correct or incorrect usage overheard in real life, in a movie, on the television, or read in a book, etc.

My first grammar gaffe post is neaseated vs. nauseaous. This isn't so much a lesson in grammar as it is in learning to use the right word to describe feeling like you want to throw up and describing the thing that makes you feel like you want to throw up.

At the weigh-in on the first episode of the new season of the Biggest Loser, one of the contestants spoke about his initial workout on the Biggest Loser Ranch. He said he felt "nauseous. "

When you feel like you want to throw up, you are nauseated. Something that makes you feel nauseated is nauseous (e.g., The nauseous meat made me nauseated.).

One of my favorite examples of the correct usage of nauseated and nauseous is from the song, "You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch."

You nauseate me, Mr. Grinch
With a nauseous super nos


It's nice to know we can learn correct grammar from an animated holiday classic.

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