Noxious or Nauseous?

When I was an undergrad ‘several’ years ago, I was tasked with writing a paper on pain perception for one of my courses that I was taking for my Physical Therapy Degree. My girlfriend (now wife) graciously offered to type my hand written draft of approximately 7-8 pages – I was delighted considering my typing skills left a lot to be desired.

A few days later, she called me excitedly to tell me that she had not only finished typing it up, she had also taken the liberty of correcting one of my ‘spelling mistakes’ that had appeared throughout the paper.

Having piqued my curiosity, I asked her for the word she was referring to. She replied that I had misspelled the word ‘nauseous’ at least 20 times throughout the paper – she mentioned that I had spelled it n o x i o u s.. – (which by the way was used properly (painful stimulus) and spelled correctly throughout the paper). She told me not to worry though, she had ‘fixed’ it, inserted the word nauseous, and that the paper was ready to submit to my professor.

Well I have to say, I was suddenly nauseous at this turn of events! When I explained that the word noxious needed to stay in the paper, we had a good laugh…nothing a small bottle of white-out couldn’t fix! Once ‘we’ changed it back, I submitted it and ended up with a good mark!

If there was one thing I learned with this experience, it is this; you have to be cautious….not to be obnoxious……when the word noxious…..gets replaced by nauseous…. WORD.