poisonous
part of speech
adjective (poisonous, more poisonous, most poisonous)
meaning for a pupil
1) Containing poison; able to make you very ill or kill you if eaten, drunk, breathed in or touched. tree →
2) Of a person or remarks: very unkind and harmful (figurative). tree →
sense in the lessons
In safety lessons: poisonous plants, berries and mushrooms — never eat anything from the wild unless an adult who knows says it's safe; household products like bleach and cleaners are poisonous; medicines can be poisonous if you take too much; carbon monoxide gas is poisonous. In science: animals like poison dart frogs are poisonous to eat or touch; animals that bite or sting with poison are venomous. Phrases: poisonous plants, poisonous berries, poisonous mushrooms, poisonous gas, highly poisonous.
examples
- Some mushrooms are poisonous. tree →
- Don't eat berries from the bushes — they might be poisonous. tree →
- Bleach is poisonous, so keep it locked away. tree →
- Poison dart frogs are poisonous to touch. tree →
- Carbon monoxide is a poisonous gas you can't smell. tree →
- Foxgloves are poisonous plants. tree →
- Is this spider poisonous or venomous? tree →
- Chocolate is poisonous to dogs. tree →
- Poisonous flies and gnats flew into the coach by thousands. tree →
note
Spelling: «poison + ous». Poisonous (harms you when you eat or touch it) vs venomous (injects poison by a bite or sting): a snake is venomous; a toadstool is poisonous. Some foods safe for people are poisonous to pets (chocolate, grapes for dogs).
In the corpora
- Some wild mushrooms are deadly poisonous; never eat one because a bot, a website or a friend says it is fine.
- Monarchs taste bad to birds because their caterpillars eat poisonous milkweed.
- Chocolate is poisonous to dogs, because it contains a chemical that dogs cannot break down well.
- Lilies are very poisonous to cats; even pollen licked off their fur can damage the kidneys.
- If you think a pet has eaten something poisonous, tell an adult at once so they can call a vet.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «poisonous» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.