poison.
A substance that is harmful or lethal to a living organism when ingested.
Meaning & usage
A substance that is harmful or lethal to a living organism when ingested.
We used a poison to kill the weeds.
Anything harmful to a person or thing.
Gossip is a malicious poison.
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.
Any substance that inhibits catalytic activity.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English poysoun, poyson, pusoun, from Old French poison, poisun, from Latin pōtiōnem (“drink, a draught, a poisonous draught, a potion”), from pōtō (“to drink”). See also potion and potable (from the same root). Mostly displaced native Old English ātor and lybb. See more at atter.
To use poison to kill or paralyse (somebody).
The assassin poisoned the king.
To pollute; to cause to become poisonous.
That factory is poisoning the river.
To cause to become much worse.
Suspicion will poison their relationship.
He poisoned the mood in the room with his non-stop criticism.
To cause (someone) to hate or to have unfair negative opinions.
She's poisoned him against all his old friends.
To inhibit the catalytic activity of.
To place false or malicious data into (a cache, etc.) as part of an exploit.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English poysoun, poyson, pusoun, from Old French poison, poisun, from Latin pōtiōnem (“drink, a draught, a poisonous draught, a potion”), from pōtō (“to drink”). See also potion and potable (from the same root). Mostly displaced native Old English ātor and lybb. See more at atter.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.