transitive verb

• 1 literary Put poison on or into; make poisonous.

  ‘the blades were envenomed with a fatal poison for which there is no antidote’

  More example sentences

  • ‘He must've envenomed them or something like that, since I saw some green liquid besides blood on his shirt.’
  • ‘I choked and coughed repeatedly as my body tried to rid itself of the smoke that still envenomed its lungs.’
  • ‘Bites are painless, though envenomed people rapidly experience paraesthesia (numbness of the extremities), tightness in the chest, difficulty breathing, weakness and paralysis.’
  • ‘Poisons normally don't act quite so hammily, and, where so large an area had to be envenomed, it might have revealed a smudge, foiling the lethal intent.’
  • ‘Laertes wounds Hamlet, but in a scuffle they exchange rapiers and he too is wounded with the envenomed point.’

  Synonyms

  poison, add poison to, spike, lace, contaminate

  embitter, make bitter, sour, poison, make rancorous, jaundice, colour, taint

  View synonyms

  1. 1.1Infuse with hostility or bitterness.
     More example sentences

     • ‘tribal rivalries envenom the bitter civil war’