2689: Venom and Venus May 1, 2024

The Roman love and fertility deity, Venus, may have been thought of as having harsh words for people, but that’s not why that word is related to the word ‘venom’. Like much of the Roman pantheon, the name ‘Venus’ comes from a normal Latin word, or in some cases Etruscan, meaning basically what they covered, like ‘Minerva’ deity of wisdom coming from an Etruscan root like ‘mens’ meaning ‘mind’.

In the case of ‘Venus’, this is a Latin word for ‘loveliness; desire’, and is very possibly related to the Norse pantheon classification ‘vanir’ for the deities overseeing love, fertility, and chaos. That said, one thing that distinguishes ‘venus’ from just being a regular word is that it is not grammatically feminine in form but it is treated as feminine when referring to Venus. The fact that ‘venom’ (from Latin ‘venenum’) shares the same root is that while it eventually referred to all potions and thereby poisons, the idea of poison is now more general too, once having the meaning ‘drug’, ‘venenum’ more specifically referred to love charms and love potions. 

The primary meaning of this Indo-European root word is love, as in Sanskrit वनोति vanati (to love), and Hittite ṷen- (intercourse). It just so happens to be the case that in a few different languages this also led to words for poison and in Albanian ‘vuaj’ (earlier *vonja) meaning “I suffer”, from the sense of ‘to strive (for)’.