Airsick

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. A condition marked by gastrointestinal distress or nausea that occurs while traveling by air
2. A form of motion sickness causing discomfort and queasiness in response to the sensations experienced during flight
3. Experiencing nausea or vomiting as a result of air travel

Etymology: Airsick is about as transparent as English compounds get: "air" plus "sick," joined to describe the queasiness people feel while flying. The combination follows the familiar pattern of other "-sick" words such as seasick, carsick and homesick, where "sick" is used in its older sense of being ill or unwell, and the first element names the cause. Seasickness was the model, since travel by sea long predated travel by air, and "airsick" simply transfers that pattern to aircraft. The point of interest is that the word arrived only once people were flying in any numbers. Early aviators reported the same nausea and dizziness that sailors knew, and the existing "-sick" formula made it easy to name the new complaint without inventing anything new. The result is a coinage built entirely from ordinary English materials, with its meaning fixed by the thing it describes rather than by any special history.

Synonyms: nauseous, queasy

Antonyms: comfortable, well