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poison

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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English

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Etymology

From Middle English poisoun, poyson, poysone, puyson, puisun, from Old French poison, poisun, from Latin pōtiōnem (“drink, a draught, a poisonous draught, a potion”), from pōtō (“I drink”). See also potion and potable (from the same root). Mostly displaced native Old English ātor. See more at atter.

Pronunciation

Noun

poison (countable and uncountable, plural poisons)

  1. A substance that is harmful or lethal to a living organism when ingested.
    Synonyms: atter, bane, contaminant, pollutant, toxin
    Hyponym: (strictly) venom
    Near-synonym: (loosely) venom
    We used a poison to kill the weeds.
  2. (figuratively) Anything harmful to a person or thing.
    Gossip is a malicious poison.
  3. (informal, idiomatic) An alcoholic drink. (Mainly in the phrases "name your poison" and "what's your poison?")
    — What's your poison?
    — I'll have a glass of whiskey.
  4. (chemistry) Any substance that inhibits catalytic activity.
    • 2013, Huazhang Liu, Ammonia Synthesis Catalysts: Innovation and Practice, page 693:
      The temperature effect of poisons. The influence of poison on the catalyst can be different with the change of reaction conditions.

Usage notes

  • In precise usage, the word poison is a hypernym, not a synonym, of venom: venom is a kind of poison (a kind of toxin) that an animal can deliver specifically via biting, stinging, or similarly controlled release. In herpetology it is shibbolethic to say the hyponym and not the hypernym when referring specifically to venom.
  • The word poison is denotatively synonymous with toxin, but it is not connotatively identical and is thus not always freely interchangeable in idiomatic usage. Especially in toxicology, the words toxin, toxic, and toxicity are not idiomatically freely interchangeable with poison, poisonous, and poisonousness, respectively, for reasons of idiomatic tone rather than denotation.

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

poison (third-person singular simple present poisons, present participle poisoning, simple past and past participle poisoned)

  1. (transitive) To use poison to kill or paralyse (somebody).
    The assassin poisoned the king.
  2. (transitive) To pollute; to cause to become poisonous.
    Synonyms: contaminate, pollute, taint
    That factory is poisoning the river.
  3. (transitive) To cause to become much worse.
    Synonyms: corrupt, taint
    Suspicion will poison their relationship.
    He poisoned the mood in the room with his non-stop criticism.
  4. (transitive) To cause (someone) to hate or to have unfair negative opinions.
    She's poisoned him against all his old friends.
  5. (chemistry) To inhibit the catalytic activity of.
  6. (transitive, computing) To place false or malicious data into (a cache, etc.) as part of an exploit.
    • 2013, Ronald L. Mendell, Investigating Information-based Crimes, page 93:
      In this technique, the hacker poisons the cache to launch malware into Web pages.

Derived terms

Translations

References

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French

Etymology

From Old French poison f, inherited from Latin pōtiōnem f. Doublet of potion f, a borrowing.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /pwa.zɔ̃/
  • Audio:(file)
  • Audio (Canada (Shawinigan)):(file)
  • Audio (France (Vosges)):(file)
  • Audio (France (Lyon)):(file)

Noun

poison m (plural poisons)

  1. poison
    Poisson sans boisson est poison. ― Fish without drink is poison.

Derived terms

Descendants

  • → Walloon: pwezon m

Further reading

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Middle English

Noun

poison

  1. alternative form of poisoun

Old French

Spanish

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