Poisonous VS Venomous

Why BOTH are often correct —

Its become a rather obnoxious trend on social platforms that when ever anyone mentions a poisonous snake, some know-it-all jumps in to correct them. “I think you mean VENOMOUS snake!” And then of course someone even more pedantic cant wait to leap in with something not very witty, like, “Unless its a blabby-blah species and you ATE it!”, and so forth, ad nauseam.

And so I would like to offer this opportunity to anyone who has been publicly humiliated in this manner by a stuffy Facebook friend to get even. You see, there is nothing wrong with using the word poisonous to describe a rattlesnake, or mamba, or cobra.

In fact, the word poisonous was used by all of our famous herpetologists, and back centuries before them by scientists to describe poisonous snakes. Even our modern dictionaries will often use the term “poisonous snake” as an example of the word poisonous in use. The suffix “ous” simply means “in possession of”, “full of”, or “possessing the qualities of”.

So poisonous literally means to be in possession of poison, which our poisonous snakes undoubtedly are!

Just a couple of quick examples. The text excerpt below is from The Handbook of Snakes of the United States and Canada by Albert and Anna Wright. Albert was a professor of zoology at Cornell University and together they produced the most authoritative guide to our snakes in the 20th Century. (Its a book I must have checked out from our city library 30 times as a kid!) …

Another example is from Carl Kauffeld in his famous book “Snakes: The Keeper and the Kept”. Kauffeld was Curator of Reptiles at New York’s Staten Island Zoo and the world authority on (poisonous) rattlesnakes of North America. You can see in the text excerpt from his book that he uses poisonous and venomous completely interchangeably. Thats because the two words can mean the exact same thing, depending on the context and author’s intention.

In order to check my understanding on this topic I drove to my library to consult the 22 volume Oxford English Dictionary. The main entry for poisonous was “having the quality of a poison, venomous”. So you see, the world’s authorities on the English language use “venomous” as a synonym of “poisonous”. So dont let some social media jerk tell you otherwise!

When I checked to see how the Oxford English Dictionary defined venomous, I saw more confirmation of the two words synonymy. Notice this is the third definition of the word, not the first. And notice that according to these guys – and believe me, these guys are the last word on the subject – a venomous bite can be delivered by a poisonous snake!

So we have two words that can mean the same thing. They are both correct and can be used interchangeably. But it doesnt mean that they cant have their own nuanced meaning, or even their own common usage.

Venom, after all, is a type of poison – a subset of the larger category. If the intent of the speaker or writer is to convey the broader category of poisonous snake, then there is no reason they shouldn’t. And there is no rational way anyone can logically correct them, unless their meaning is obviously incorrect within the context they provide.

When my son was about 8 and learning all his car makes and models he would continually correct me. If I said “That car almost ran into us”, he would immediately respond, “That TOYOTA almost ran into us!” I would say, “That Toyota is a car too” and he would shrug, probably thinking his first precious thoughts of what an idiot his dad was. But just like a Toyota is a car, a venomous snake is indeed poisonous. In fact, when the super smarty pants mention that members of the Genus Rhabdophis are both venomous AND poisonous they are making about as much sense as saying that hunk of rusting metal over there is a car AND a Toyota! Brilliant, right?

The truth is of course that the word venomous is being used more frequently today to describe biting and stinging animals. (Notice its not often used to describe stinging plants, even those with stinging needles!) But we have many synonyms in our English language. One term does not have to be wrong simply because another is right. As Kauffeld, Ditmars, Pope, the Wrights, and all the other great herpetologists knew, both terms are perfectly appropriate when used in the proper context.