2688: Semantic Narrowing of Venom and Poison Apr 30, 2024

English has a lot of words. By many metrics, it has more words than any other language. That means that many terms that would have had lots of meanings have picked up highly niche connotations. For instance, there is a habit some people have of correcting the notion that snakes aren’t poisonous, but rather venomous, with the former denoting something that is toxic when ingested, and the latter referring to poison that is injected via bite or sting.

First of all, even in that definition, some snakes are poisonous, like the rhabdophis keelback snakes, though the snake’s poisonous quality is developed from its diet. More to the point, this distinction is really very new, and doesn’t really exist in other languages. ‘Venom’ comes from the Latin ‘venenum’ meaning ‘poison’. The original meaning of this word was also something like ‘charm’ and possibly ‘potion’, which would make sense especially given that ‘poison’, ‘potion’, and ‘potable’ all come from the same root meaning ‘to drink’. There will be more about the wide range of meanings related to ‘venenum’ tomorrow.