Idiom
ad nauseam
Meaning
Repeated so often that everyone is sick of it.
Examples
“We have discussed this ad nauseam.”
“The policy had been explained ad nauseam in emails nobody had opened.”
“The radio station played that summer hit ad nauseam until listeners started calling in to complain about the constant repetition.”
“The point was repeated ad nauseam in the belief that repetition was persuasion, when in practice each restatement bought a little less attention than the one before it.”
Examples
simple
“We have discussed this ad nauseam.”
contextual
“The policy had been explained ad nauseam in emails nobody had opened.”
“The radio station played that summer hit ad nauseam until listeners started calling in to complain about the constant repetition.”
complex
“The point was repeated ad nauseam in the belief that repetition was persuasion, when in practice each restatement bought a little less attention than the one before it.”
Origin
Ad nauseam means, quite literally, to the point of sickness. Nausea is a Latin word taken straight from Greek, where it started out as seasickness — nausia, from naus, a ship — before it broadened to cover queasiness of any kind.
Roman rhetorical training was concerned with how much repetition an argument could stand before the audience turned on the speaker, and Latin supplied the phrase for the point past which it could not.
English adopted it in the seventeenth century and has used it as a complaint ever since. To argue a point ad nauseam is not to argue it thoroughly; it is to argue it until the room stops listening.
Stories
The Poets' Latin · See all Roman origin
Horace, Virgil and Cicero, still quoted in the original.
carpe diem — Seize the day — make use of today rather than counting on tomorrow.
tempus fugit — Time flies — said when far more of it has gone than you expected.
memento mori — A reminder that you are going to die, and that this should change how you spend the time.
in vino veritas — People say what they actually think once they have had a drink.
festina lente — Make haste slowly — move quickly, but never faster than you can do it properly.
to err is human — Making mistakes is part of being a person, so a mistake alone is not a scandal.
- Level
- C1 · Advanced
- Updated