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PlainSpell

poison

poi·son/ˈpɔɪ.zən/noun, verb

poison is spelled P-O-I-S-O-N, 2 syllables: poi·son. The wrong spelling people search most is posion: about 380 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 14 of all searches for the word. Poison is a noun meaning “A substance that is harmful or lethal to a living organism when ingested”. The plural of poison is poisons.

How many letters and syllables are in poison?

Letters6: P-O-I-S-O-N
Syllables2: poi·son
In writing12 times per million words; the 6,230th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searched2; the most searched, posion, about 380 Bing searches a month (all of them)

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).

How do you spell poison?

Poison is spelled P-O-I-S-O-N. 2 wrong spellings are searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 11 of the searches for poison in either form.

poisonthe right spelling4,840 searches a month
posioni and s swapped380 searches a month
poisini in place of o100 searches a month

Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.

How common is poison?

Poison appears 12 times per million words in written English, the 6,230th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce poison?

  • US /ˈpɔɪ.zən/
  • British /ˈpoj.zən/
  • Australia /ˈpoɪ.zən/

Poison has 2 syllables, split poi·son in writing.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-poison.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of poison

  • poisons plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • poisoning participle, present
  • poisoned participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does poison mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

noun

  1. 1

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

    Near-synonym: (loosely) venom

  2. 2

    Anything harmful to a person or thing.

    Gossip is a malicious poison.

  3. 3

    informalAn alcoholic drink. (Mainly in the phrases "name your poison" and "what's your poison?")

    – What's your poison? – I'll have a glass of whiskey.

  4. 4

    Any substance that inhibits catalytic activity.

verb

  1. 1

    To use poison to kill or paralyse (somebody).

    The assassin poisoned the king.

  2. 2

    To pollute; to cause to become poisonous.

    That factory is poisoning the river.

  3. 3

    To cause to become much worse.

    Suspicion will poison their relationship.

  4. 4

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

    She's poisoned him against all his old friends.

  5. 5

    To inhibit the catalytic activity of.

  6. 6

    To place false or malicious data into (a cache, etc.) as part of an exploit.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Poison in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchpoison (substance harmful to a living organism), empoisonner (to use poison to kill or paralyse – see also…)
GermanGift, Giftstoff (substance harmful to a living organism), vergiften (to use poison to kill or paralyse – see also…)
Portugueseveneno, tóxico (substance harmful to a living organism), envenenar, empeçonhar, intoxicar (to use poison to kill or paralyse – see also…)
Spanishveneno, ponzoña (substance harmful to a living organism), emponzoñar, aponzoñar (disused) (to use poison to kill or paralyse – see also…)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does poison come from?

From Middle English poysoun, poyson, pusoun, from Old French poison, poisun, from Latin pōtiōnem (“drink, a draught, a poisonous draught, a potion”), from pōtō (“to drink”). See also potion and potable (from the same root). Mostly displaced native Old English ātor and lybb. See more at atter.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after poison