Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- transitive verb To make poisonous or noxious.
- transitive verb To embitter.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To taint or impregnate, as meat, drink, or weapons, with venom or any substance noxious to life; make poisonous: chiefly in the past participle: as, an envenomed arrow or shaft; an envenomed potion.
- Figuratively, to imbue as it were with venom; taint with bitterness or malice.
- To make odious or hateful.
- To make angry; enrage; exasperate.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb To taint or impregnate with venom, or any substance noxious to life; to poison; to render dangerous or deadly by poison, as food, drink, a weapon; ; also, to poison (a person) by impregnating with venom.
- transitive verb To taint or impregnate with bitterness, malice, or hatred; to imbue as with venom; to imbitter.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb To make
poisonous - verb To
acerbate
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb add poison to
- verb cause to be bitter or resentful
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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In Lemnos pining with th 'envenom'd wound The fon of Psan, Philocletes, lay:
The works of the English poets; with prefaces, biographical and critical 1790
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543: With conquest, felt th 'envenom'd robe, and tore
Paradise Lost (1667) 1667
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No. Then let France carry on, unless you deliberately decide to envenom the conflict in order to distract attention from your own difficulties.
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These notaries are strange fellows; they envenom everything.
A Marriage Contract 2007
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Mothers of families, dowagers who had granddaughters to establish, young girls jealous of Natalie, whose elegance and tyrannical beauty annoyed them, took pains to envenom this opinion with treacherous remarks.
A Marriage Contract 2007
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There were private wrongs to envenom the contest, but it was the mercantile quarrel on which the Colonel chose to set his declaration of war.
The Newcomes 2006
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To cite a rather trivial example, nothing in the creed or practice of Christians does more to envenom the hatred of Mahomedans against them, than the fact of their eating pork.
On Liberty 2002
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I rushed forward, regretting only that I had not had time to envenom my blade.
Trumps of Doom Zelazny, Roger 1985
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M. Louis Blanc has distilled the bile of journalism; he has paused over the hasty sarcasm which political animosity deals forth, not to correct, or moderate, or abate, but merely to point and envenom it.
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 Various
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It requires but a few drops of poison to envenom a whole well.
The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 Various
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