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poison

[poi-zuhn]

Example Sentences Origin

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noun

a substance with an inherent property that tends to destroy life or impair health.

something harmful or pernicious, as to happiness or well-being: the poison of slander.

Slang. any variety of alcoholic liquor: Name your poison!

verb (used with object)

to administer poison to (a person or animal).

to kill or injure with or as if with poison.

to put poison into or upon; saturate with poison: to poison food.

to ruin, vitiate, or corrupt: Hatred had poisoned his mind.

Chemistry. to destroy or diminish the activity of (a catalyst or enzyme).

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Poison is always a great word to know.

So is spaz. Does it mean:

a grotesquely awkward person; an eccentric person

to refuse to serve at a bar or restaurant; to be thrown out of or forbidden from an establishment

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adjective

causing poisoning; poisonous: a poison shrub.

Origin:
1200–50; Middle English puisun < Old French < Latin pōtiōn- (stem of pōtiō) drink, potion, poisonous draught

Related forms

poi·son·er, noun

poi·son·less, adjective

poi·son·less·ness, noun

out·poi·son, verb (used with object)

self-poi·son·er, noun

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un·poi·soned, adjective

COLLAPSE

Synonyms
1. Poison, toxin, venom are terms for any substance that injures the health or destroys life when absorbed into the system, especially of a higher animal. Poison is the general word: a poison for insects. A toxin is a poison produced by an organism; it is especially used in medicine in reference to disease-causing bacterial secretions: A toxin produces diphtheria. Venom is especially used of the poisons secreted by certain animals, usually injected by bite or sting: the venom of a snake. 7. contaminate, pollute, taint.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Link To poison

Example Sentences

Last summer's drought left a legacy of poison that threatens the country's food supply.

They poison colleges and universities, affecting the morale of.

Al-Qaeda has had a long interest in ricin, a low-tech poison that can be made from the processing-waste of castor beans.

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Last summer's drought left a legacy of poison that threatens the country's food supply.

They poison colleges and universities, affecting the morale of.

Al-Qaeda has had a long interest in ricin, a low-tech poison that can be made from the processing-waste of castor beans.

Strawberry poison dart frog fathers take good care of their tadpoles.

It is also possible to infect someone with a radio controlled poison.

These mollusks inject their unsuspecting prey with a fast-acting poison.

Effective on hard-to-kill brushy weeds such as blackberry, poison oak, and poison ivy.

These days, nobody in a western military would dream of using poison darts.

Keep your new job environment as free from the poison of you last experience as possible.

The poison cannot be sealed off with a physical wall-there is too much of it, too far down.

Poison frogs may be losing their toxicity as human development fragments their habitats, a recent study says.

But researchers fret that these tiny tools could poison the body.

Like poison oak, it has clusters of leaves and is not quite a foothigh.

Spinosad has both stomach poison and contact activity.

Their predators end up with with bellies full of poison.

Humans and, oddly, pigs are the only species susceptible to the skin irritation caused by the oils in the poison ivy plant.

The same poison is now entering crops and more of the food chain.

Four varieties of strawberry poison dart frogs show the tremendous amount of variation that can be found in a single species.

Botulinum toxin is a lethal poison and a potential biological weapons agent.

Regular salt, which is a chemical by product and is heavily chemically treated, is poison.

But boric acid has been tagged by the feds as an infant-killing poison.

The chalice may be gold, but the liquid within is poison.

We know that without proper measurement, medicine can become poison.

Poison dart frogs are tiny, yet they pack a deadly poison.

More people use drugs today because of the effects of vaccines and poison in the food.

With prominent fenders and a bright green hood, it's also intentionally reminiscent of a poison dart frog.

There had to be another cause of death, probably poison.

The police may soon identify who administered the poison.

To combat the problem, local authorities have distributed rat poison in the affected areas.

They've eliminated the poison arsenic and the brain-damaging mercury-and sheathed it in a recycleable aluminum skin.

It's been celebrated as a muse and banned as a poison.

If you fake the ideas or results, and publish them, the poison spreads.

Nor do investors have much chance to protest, since poison pills are almost always introduced without a shareholder vote.

The fish produce no poison but may build up harmful levels of ciguatera as that toxin works its way up the marine food chain.

The side effect is to poison the soil, so that subsequent food crops die before they reach harvest.

Please have a neutralize poison spell available when you find him.

They have chemicals in their skin that show affinities to the poison arrow frogs in other countries.

One explanation might be the involvement with a super poison.

He wasn't content to simply poison them with conventional pesticides.

The horses produce natural antibodies to counteract the small amounts of poison in their systems.

The vilest deeds of poison weeds-ivy, oak, and sumac-can be avoided if you know the best prevention and treatment tips.

He gingerly coats the four inches of the wire shaft behind the arrow tip with poison stored in a steenbok horn.

The proliferation of poison ivy has created a business opportunity for horticulturists who help people get rid of the itchy vine.

Indeed, the venom from a single golden poison frog.

Summer is back, and so is poison ivy, stronger than ever.

However, the chemicals are hazardous to health and the waste materials generated can poison groundwater if not disposed of.

The sap from its lethal-looking pointy leaves can be used as arrow-tip poison or can be dumped into a creek to kill fish.

When fresh air struck the flesh under the dropping, an odd chemical reaction took place that caused a poison to form in his skin.

Here, the food was sometimes spiked with cineole-a poison often found in eucalyptus leaves.

Then, over dessert, casually slip into the conversation the poison that their secret client wanted them to spread.

Even so, when they prepare fugu, sometimes a tiny bit of poison remains.

But the downside of using such chemicals is that they can poison people and pets as well as backyard wildlife:.

In some parts of the world this species is reported to have a poison that they excrete to kill off fish.

So the bitter aftermath of the presidential election continues to poison what is still a young democracy.

He ventured into the jungle armed with a blowgun and poison darts.

But remember the axiom: it's the dose that makes the poison.

It has even been suggested that poison was administered to him via his tobacco.

The researchers suggest this may be because similar chemicals are found in the poison glands of several ant species.

The birds died by the hundreds, and bird lovers demanded that the poison be banned.

And finally, some people will handle deadly snakes and drink poison.

She had said in conversation, in a matter-of-fact way, that she went with her mother to deliver the poison to her father.

One or two poison molecules per protein will suffice.

But, concentration of excessive resources beyond imaginable limits tends to poison the society".

The scientists mowed down the rosebush and shot a poison gas into the rats' hole.

It's easy to poison many foods and over-the-counter medicines right through the seal.

In truth, open trade is a health tonic, whereas many look on it as a poison for domestic producers.

When traps and poison failed to work, shooting became the preferred method for controlling the crow population.

Tonka beans are a natural source of coumarin, the precursor to warfarin, which is used as both a medication and rat poison.

His mother claimed that he had thwarted an attempt to poison him.

The tiny hunter will grip its prey-such as a much larger cave shrimp-and then inject poison into its victim.

Stand a little straighter knowing you have felled a literary giant with your poison pen.

The political parties are doing their best to poison the atmosphere, threatening candidates with ostracism.

You'll poison everyone who works in the plant, especially when it leaks.

In other words, both bold solutions came from a poison seed.

Encouraging this poison to escape allows the bacteria to survive longer and thus produce yet more methane.

Like many venomous snakes, the cobra's poison affects its victim's central.

Exposure to the poison can result in loss of control of bodily functions as well as death.

We parked near a house and walked about five minutes up a trail near a hillside thick with brush and littered with poison oak.

We really don't need to depend on foreign countries, who are hell-bent and determined on trying to poison us for our foods.

His younger friend survived an eighteen gram dose of the same poison.

Religion is poison to scientific thinking and methodology.

Lead is recycled so much because it's widely known a a poison if not properly handled that laws were made making it mandatory.

Poison pills, or provisions to thwart takeovers, usually benefit management rather than shareholders.

COLLAPSE

Collins

World English Dictionary

poison (ˈpɔɪz^ən)

—n
1.	any substance that can impair function, cause structural damage, or otherwise injure the bodyRelated: toxic
2.	something that destroys, corrupts, etc: the poison of fascism
3.	a substance that retards a chemical reaction or destroys or inhibits the activity of a catalyst
4.	a substance that absorbs neutrons in a nuclear reactor and thus slows down the reaction. It may be added deliberately or formed during fission
5.	informal what's your poison? what would you like to drink?

—vb
6.	to give poison to (a person or animal) esp with intent to kill
7.	to add poison to
8.	to taint or infect with or as if with poison
9.	(foll by against) to turn (a person's mind) against: he poisoned her mind against me
10.	to retard or stop (a chemical or nuclear reaction) by the action of a poison
11.	to inhibit or destroy (the activity of a catalyst) by the action of a poison

Related: toxic

[C13: from Old French puison potion, from Latin pōtiō a drink, esp a poisonous one, from pōtāre to drink]

'poisoner

—n

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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Etymonline

Word Origin & History

poison

early 13c., "a deadly potion," from O.Fr. puison (12c.) "a drink," later "a potion, poisonous drink" (14c.), from L. potionem (nom. potio) "a drink," also "poisonous drink," from potare "to drink" (see potion). The O.E. word was ator (see

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attercop) or lybb. Slang sense of "alcoholic drink" first attested 1805, Amer.Eng. The verb is c.1300, from the noun. Related: Poisoned; poisoning. Poison ivy first recorded 1784; poison oak is from 1743. Poison gas first recorded 1915. Poison-pen (letter) popularized 1913 by a notorious criminal case in Pennsylvania, U.S.; it may date back to 1908. In many Germanic languages "poison" is euphemistically named by a word equivalent to English gift (cf. O.H.G. gift, Dan., Swed. gift; Du. gift, vergift). This choice might have been aided by Gk. dosis "a portion prescribed," lit. "a giving," used by Galen and other Greek physicians to mean an amount of medicine (see dose).

COLLAPSE

American Heritage

Medical Dictionary

poison poi·son (poi'zən)
n.

A substance taken internally or applied externally that is injurious to health or dangerous to life.
A chemical substance that inhibits another substance or a reaction.

v. poi·soned, poi·son·ing, poi·sons
To kill or harm with poison.

Slang Dictionary

poison definition

mod.
wicked; evil. : Stay away from her. She's poison.
n.
an alcoholic drink. : Name your poison.

Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
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Easton

Bible Dictionary

Poison definition

(1.) Heb. hemah, "heat," the poison of certain venomous reptiles (Deut. 32:24, 33; Job 6:4; Ps. 58:4), causing inflammation. (2.) Heb. rosh, "a head," a poisonous plant (Deut. 29:18), growing luxuriantly (Hos. 10:4), of a bitter taste (Ps. 69:21; Lam. 3:5), and coupled with wormwood; probably the poppy. This word is rendered "gall", q.v., (Deut. 29:18; 32:33; Ps. 69:21; Jer. 8:14, etc.), "hemlock" (Hos. 10:4; Amos 6:12), and "poison" (Job 20:16), "the poison of asps," showing that the _rosh_ was not exclusively a vegetable poison. (3.) In Rom. 3:13 (comp. Job 20:16; Ps. 140:3), James 3:8, as the rendering of the Greek ios.

Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary
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American Heritage

Idioms & Phrases

poison

In addition to the idiom beginning with poison, also see one man's meat is another man's poison.

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