poisoning

Pluralpoisonings (some meanings)

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The condition of having been affected by a poison entering the body.

   Symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning include headache and dizziness.

   The child was rushed to the hospital with clear signs of poisoning.

   Similartoxicity

   Note

   Here the word sits with the person poisoned rather than with the poisoner. It names something a body undergoes, which can run a course and may never be reversed. The Economist in 2014 described manganese miners whose poisoning was irreversible and ended in psychosis. A noun placed in front usually names the cause, as in carbon monoxide poisoning.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of giving or administering a poison to someone or something.

   Investigators eventually ruled the death a deliberate poisoning.

   The trial centered on the gradual poisoning of her husband over many weeks.

   Note

   As a countable noun it names a single incident: a poisoning, a series of poisonings, the accidental poisonings of young children. Used without an article it names the act or practice in general. In both uses the attention falls on the giving of the poison rather than on its effect, and that is how to tell it from the victim's condition.

3. 3
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of poison.

   The factory was poisoning the river for years before anyone noticed.

   Poisoning the enemy's wells was widely condemned as dishonorable.

   Note

   The verb form carries every meaning of poison: killing with a toxin, polluting a river, souring someone's opinions, inhibiting a catalyst, or planting malicious data in a cache. After be it forms the progressive (was poisoning the river). As a gerund it takes a direct object (poisoning the wells), whereas the noun for the act needs of: the poisoning of the wells.

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