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bugs (mander.xyz)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
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[–] 2 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Are some spiders poisonous? Are all animals that are venomous also poisonous? Also I'd like to say that there is no linguistic difference between the two in some languages. There is no distinction between the two in German for instance. It's either giftig or it isn't.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    It's an unfortunate false friend that the German word Gift means poison in English.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    Same root though. In Dutch it wasn't differentiated until recently so the same word has vastly different meanings between Afrikaans and Dutch. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/gifte#Middle_Low_German

    Original meaning seems to be something that was given. So a snake would gift you Poison just like snot nosed brats would gift you a cold during Thanksgiving dinner.

    Same meaning as dose in that sense. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/dosis#Latin

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    The word has been used as a euphemism for "poison" since Old High German, a semantic loan from Late Latin dosis (“dose”), from Ancient Greek δόσις (dósis, “gift; dose of medicine”).

    I wondered how the heck it got that meaning. Pretty strange to apply a term for giving something in general to poison specifically.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    There is a distinction to make. For example some snake venom is not poisonous when traveling through your digestive system, and only becomes a problem when it enters the blood stream (usually from a bite).

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    I don't think it matters in most contexts. When people are casually talking about it, venomous and poisonous are both stand-ins for "it has venom." They're not telling other people, "actually, don't eat spiders." I was just joking about the classic pedant line about spiders.

    But it does make a difference on paper. I'm curious how you would express this in German: A black widow is venomous and in theory a healthy human can eat a dead black widow with no ill effects.

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