At the risk of being overly pedantic, topologists would typically classify this as venom.
Venom is inert if digested; it's only a problem if it gets in your blood stream. So arrows that were laced with venom and thereby contaminated meat were actually perfectly safe to eat.
Poison is different. If ingested, inhaled, or absorbed it will kill you.
We Dutch solve this problem by having a single word for "poison", "venom and "toxin"¹. Everybody still knows what you mean and nobody gets to be pedantic.
Although there are plenty of other opportunities for pedantry, especially when we take regionalisms, and other Portuguese speaking countries into account.
> Funny that in English gift is a word but entirely different meaning.
In English it maintains its original Germanic meaning derived from the verb give.
The sense of "poison" in German comes from a euphemistic use of "gift". (Literally 'something given' but actually used to calque Greek "dosis", which also literally meant 'something given', but was used to mean 'dose [of medicine]'.)
Summing up, the reason gift is a word in English with an entirely different meaning from what it has in German is that everyone in Germany forgot what gift meant.
(The reason it's gift and not something more like yift is the Danelaw.)
It's probably the same, for example in Afrikaans its just gif. Vergif is the verb action of doing it, and vergiftig the same past tense of it having happened previously.
Magyar (Hungarian) and Finnish are both Uralic languages along with Estonian and the Sámi languages, but none of these are related to the Indo-European languages common in the other parts of Europe.
And while most of Europe’s extant languages are in the Indo-European language family, there’s still a fair number of differences between Albanian, Germanic, Hellenic, Celtic, Romantic and Slavic languages.
Oh for sure there are many differences, that comes with them being different languages, countries, ethnicity. You can do this on many levels.
The point was essentially what you're showing here: People focusing on all the differences instead of shared history, languages influencing each other and how we're all not that different in the end.
If you want to, even within what are nowadays countries and what outsiders would say is "one language" and "one ethnicity", you can start focusing on differences and make people dislike each other.
At the very least, they'd complain about accuracy, if not time zone, or even how we should all be on UTC (do not get one started on the difference between GMT and UTC if you value your... time)
Obviously I know "jad" but I don't see any issue with calling venom "trucizna". Natural languages aren't C++ and you don't get compiler errors when you speak - to me, there is no issue calling both venoms and poison trucizna. Polish dictionary doesn't seem to contradict it either:
Nobody would say „trujący wąż” (poisonous snake) or „jadowity grzyb” (venomous mushroom). The distinction is similar to English. There are exceptions and contexts where it can be used interchangeably but arguably the same is true for English.
Italy, the core remnant of the Roman Empire, has unmatched language diversity, often varies even from town to town. It's a colorful mosaic of micro cultures and customs where people from one region using different words for venom/poison is completely normal, in their local dialect. Everyone speaks standard Italian though.
You've never visited Italy ? They're not that far away and I'm sure you'll love it.
> The point is, both are correct(afaik) while in English venom and poison are definitely two different things.
No, the situation in English matches your description exactly: all of these things are called poison. The word venom is almost never used in natural speech.
Furthermore, if you ask English speakers what the difference between poison and venom is, by far the two most common responses will be "there isn't one" and "I don't know". icyfox is just looking to be annoying.
(Another popular option will probably be "it's called venom when you're talking about snakes", which explains roughly 100% of use of venom in natural speech.)
And in Russian we use "jad" ("яд" in cyrillic) for both. Although there is the word "отрава", which can be used for poisons and "яд" is closer to "venom" the difference is almost non-existant and both are often used interchangeably.
TIL. I always thought that "If it bite you -> you die = venom" and "If you eat, bite, touch -> you die = poison". But your differentiation makes more sense
>a venomous creature that bites you will release its venom into your bloodstream
unless it's a bee, wasp, hornet, scorpion, stingray, jellyfish, man-of-war, platypus, lionfish, stonefish, sea urchin, or catfish, which all have venom instead of poison, but the delivery mechanism of said venom isn't biting
If a venomous snake bites you, you die. If you bite a venomous snake, you live.
If a poisonous snake bites you, you will. If you bite a poisonous snake, you die.
Or Hamlet's mother died by drinking poisoned wine. Hamlet died by being stabbed with an envenomed sword.
You're mixing up phōnē (voice) and phonos (slaughter), but the truth about Persephone is actually more metal.
Her name predates Greek contacts with Persians, so the timeline doesn't fit. Instead, it comes from perthein (to destroy) + phonos, making her the "Bringer of Destruction". With a caveat that the etymology of her name is uncertain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persephone#Name
I do like "killer of distance" for telephone, though. :)
> Instead, it comes from perthein (to destroy) + phonos, making her the "Bringer of Destruction". With a caveat that the etymology of her name is uncertain:
But... of all the theories listed there, perthein isn't among them.
And if the roots are "destroy" and "death", what would make her the "bringer" of destruction?
Fair point about the source, but the classification usually follows the mode of delivery, not the organism of origin.
Many plant-derived compounds function as venoms once introduced into the bloodstream (arrow coatings, darts, etc.), even if they’re also toxic when ingested. Curare is one example of a plant-based compound - lethal in blood, but largely harmless if eaten.
So while Boophone is absolutely a poison in the ecological sense, using it on arrows still fits the venom/toxin distinction better than a purely ingested poison. Otherwise why would people hunt with this if they got sick the second they ate the meat?
What things are more important than the study of meanings in a linguistic context?
Well semantics only covers an infinitesimal fraction of all meaning. Consider if I inject arsenic into a snakes venom sac is it now a venom? Nothing about your answer changes anything about what’s going on, yet you could still debate the question.
So when you say “what could be more important” I can only say that just about everything is more important.
Venom is inert if digested; it's only a problem if it gets in your blood stream. So arrows that were laced with venom and thereby contaminated meat were actually perfectly safe to eat.
Poison is different. If ingested, inhaled, or absorbed it will kill you.