Nausea

The story of the word

The Greek word means seasickness and nothing wider, straight from naûs, ship. Latin borrowed it, and by the time English took it in the 1400s the sea had fallen away and only the queasiness was left. Nautical, nautilus and astronaut carry the same ship. Some etymologists trace noise back to nausea through Old French, on the grounds that a boatload of sick passengers makes a din, though the derivation is contested.

How it travelled

Ancient Greek → Latin → English

First recorded

15th century