The question "What's your poison?" is an informal way of asking someone what they would like to drink. Apparently it has been used in this way since the mid-1800s. I read recently that the word "poison" derives from the Latin word for drink (potio, which also gave us potable). It may be just an interesting coincidence that "poison" is being used with the ancient (harmless) meaning. Is there any evidence of the word being used with the harmless meaning in the centuries between?
Learn English – What’s your poison – origin
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Related Solutions
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the use of strike in baseball was originally referred to as:
An act of striking at the ball, characterized as a fair or foul strike (see quot. 1874); three ‘foul strikes’ cause the batter to be put out.
The literal definition is (there is also the figurative one of having "a strike against you):
A ‘foul strike’, or any act or shortcoming on the batter's part which incurs the same penalty. Hence, a pitched ball recorded against the batter; esp. as one of three counts against the batter
It was first used in the 1800s:
1841 Picayune (New Orleans) 25 May 2/2 If ‘Edith’ wishes to see ‘a great strike’‥, let her walk down Water street‥and see the ‘bachelors’ make the ball fly.
So a strike in baseball comes from the attempt to strike the ball. It seems that it was used positively for a while--there are quotes referring to "great strikes". It looks like our current use of strike could be a shortening of foul strike--it only maintained its negative meaning. By the end of the 1800s, it still referred to the physical act of hitting something:
1896 R. G. Knowles & M. Morton Baseball 103 Strike.—When the batsman tries and fails to hit a ball delivered to him by the pitcher, or refuses to strike at a fair ball.
By the 1900s, however, it was a negative thing:
1912 C. Mathewson Pitching in Pinch 12 It put me in the hole with the count two balls and one strike.
This is the way we use it today.
Investigative Process
Since the scientific name for the plant is easier to trace due to the obsessive nature of botany and herbology, I thought a good place to start would be to trace the source of when this plant got its name.
From the Theatrum Botanicum: The Theater of Plants : Or, An Herball of Large Extent: Containing Therein a More Ample and Exact History and Declaration of the Physicall Herbs and Plants ... Distributed Into Sundry Classes Or Tribes, for the More Easie Knowledge of the Many Herbes of One Nature and Property (Published 1640), it had this to say:
Through this we now know that as out 1640 the name had been established in the botany world.
However, searching prior to this time I've run into a snag. Most of it is in Latin (which I do not know very well. So, I decided to put it into Google Translate in hopes that I would get a rough idea of what they are talking about.
This is a passage from Antonii Riccoboni Rhodigini De historia liber: cum fragmentis historicorum veterum latinorum summa fide & diligentia ab eodem collectis & auctis : quorum auctores sequens pagella indicabit by Antonio Riccobono from 1579 (approximate date).
Pktonis Gorgias Ennij Besides the famous action against old age, there are four are common: first thatit substarcts from thing s[geredis]; second, that it makes the body weak: third that it subtracts from almost all pleasures of fourth, that it is not far from death.
Privet (in this case) seems to mean 'to take', or 'to deprive'. There might be some connection, but it's hard to tell at this point.
Curious, I went even further back in time to find where exactly did this word originate. If there was an origin I could look at. Suffice to say, when you go further than 1570, well, English ain't what it is today.
(Extract from Hermogenis Tarsensis rhetoris acutissimi De ratione inueniendi oratoria, libri IIII, by Hermogenes, Johannes Sturm, Jan Kocýn z Kocynéthu Excudit Iosius Rihelius., 1570).
At this point I completely lost the plot because I was too fascinated with where I've gone that I completely forgot my initial intention in the first place. But why did I search for the common name instead of the Latin one? Truthfully? No idea. I just thought I could get further if I used that route.
One thing I did notice was between the term, name and word Privet/Privett there is a constant connection with 'iliad'. Many of the older books I've searched through had the two close words (iliad & privet) close together. Here's one from Thesaurus graecae linguae linguae, cui, conpingendo, additum est opus : glossaria duo... adutriusq. linguae cognitionem...perutilia. Item de atticae linguae seu dialecti idiomatis commentarium H. Stephanus by Henri Estienne ('Privet' is marked with the red arrow).
Perhaps coincidence, but interesting nonetheless.
Best Answer
Not according to the OED.
In an entry updated in 2006, it lists only two meanings as "literal uses": the ordinary meaning, which is also the oldest (recorded from 1225); and a slightly later, but obsolete, meaning "A drink prepared for a special purpose; a medicinal draught; a potion."
Under "extended uses" it lists "colloquial (originally U.S.). Alcoholic liquor; an alcoholic drink. Frequently in what's your poison?: what drink would you like?" from 1805, but no other uses without deadly connotations.