different between poison vs jail

English

Etymology

From Middle English poisoun, poyson, poysone, puyson, puisun, from Old French puison, poison, from Latin p?tio, p?ti?nis (“drink, a draught, a poisonous draught, a potion”), from p?t? (“I drink”). Displaced native Old English ?tor. See also potion and potable.

Pronunciation

• enPR: poi'z?n, IPA^(key): /?p??z(?)n/
• Rhymes: -??z?n
• Hyphenation: poi?son

Noun

poison (countable and uncountable, plural poisons)

1. A substance that is harmful or lethal to a living organism when ingested.

2. Something that harms a person or thing.

3. (informal) An intoxicating drink; a liquor. (note: this sense is chiefly encountered in the phrases "name your poison" and "what's your poison ?")

   — What's your poison?

   — I'll have a glass of whisky.

4. (chemistry) Any substance that inhibits catalytic activity.
   • 2013, Huazhang Liu, Ammonia Synthesis Catalysts: Innovation and Practice (page 693)

     The temperature effect of poisons. The influence of poison on the catalyst can be different with the change of reaction conditions.

Usage notes

• Not to be confused with venom

Synonyms

• (substance that is harmful): atter, bane, contaminant, pollutant, toxin

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

poison (third-person singular simple present poisons, present participle poisoning, simple past and past participle poisoned)

1. (transitive) To use poison to kill or paralyse (somebody).

2. (transitive) To pollute; to cause to become poisonous.

3. (transitive) To cause to become much worse.

4. (transitive) To cause (someone) to hate or to have unfair negative opinions.

5. (chemistry) To inhibit the catalytic activity of.
6. (transitive, computing) To place false information into (a cache) as part of an exploit.
   • 2013, Ronald L. Mendell, Investigating Information-based Crimes (page 93)

     In this technique, the hacker poisons the cache to launch malware into Web pages.

Synonyms

• (to pollute): contaminate, pollute, taint
• (to cause to become worse): corrupt, taint

Derived terms

Translations

References

• Douglas Harper (2001–2021) , “poison”, in Online Etymology Dictionary
• poison in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

French

Etymology

From Old French, inherited from Latin p?tio, p?ti?nis. Doublet of potion, a borrowing.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pwa.z??/

Noun

poison m (plural poisons)

1. poison

Derived terms

• empoisonner
  • empoisonnement
• poisonneux

Further reading

• “poison” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Middle English

Noun

poison

1. Alternative form of poisoun

Old French

Etymology

From Latin p?tio, p?ti?nis.

Noun

poison f (oblique plural poisons, nominative singular poison, nominative plural poisons)

1. poison
2. potion

Descendants

• ? Middle English: poisoun
  • English: poison
• French: poison

Spanish

Etymology

From French poison. Doublet of poción.

Noun

poison m (plural póisones)

1. (Louisiana) poison

English

Alternative forms

• gaol (UK, Australia, Ireland, dated)

Etymology

From Middle English gayole, gaylle, gaille, gayle, gaile, via Old French gaiole, gayolle, gaole, from Medieval Latin gabiola, for Vulgar Latin *caveola, a diminutive of Latin cavea (“cavity, coop, cage”). Doublet of cage.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /d?e?l/
• Rhymes: -e?l

Noun

jail (countable and uncountable, plural jails)

1. A place or institution for the confinement of persons held in lawful custody or detention, especially for minor offenses or with reference to some future judicial proceeding.
2. (uncountable) Confinement in a jail.
3. (horse racing) The condition created by the requirement that a horse claimed in a claiming race not be run at another track for some period of time (usually 30 days).
4. In dodgeball and related games, the area where players who have been struck by the ball are confined.
5. (computing, FreeBSD) A kind of sandbox for running a guest operating system instance.

Usage notes

• (place of confinement): Like many nouns denoting places where people spend time, jail requires no article after certain prepositions: hence in jail (“detained in a jail”), go to jail (“become detained in a jail”), and so on. The forms in a jail, go to a jail, and so on do exist, but tend to imply mere presence in the jail, rather than detention there.
• Until Monopoly popularised the spelling jail in the UK and Australia, gaol was the standard spelling in these countries.
• In the United States, there is a formal distinction between the terms jail and prison – the former refers to facilities run by local governments, the later refers to facilities run by the state and federal governments; however, this distinction is not always observed in informal usage. By contrast, in most of the rest of the English-speaking world, the two terms are synonymous.

Synonyms

• (place of confinement): slammer, hoosegow

Hypernyms

• (place of confinement): correctional facility, correctional institution

Coordinate terms

• (place of confinement): big house, prison

Derived terms

Descendants

• ? Hindi: ??? (jel)
• ? Urdu: ???? (jel)

Translations

Verb

jail (third-person singular simple present jails, present participle jailing, simple past and past participle jailed)

1. To imprison.

Synonyms

• imprison
• incarcerate

Translations

Anagrams

• jali