POISONED Synonyms: 178 Similar and Opposite Words

poisoned 1 of 2

adjective

as in poisonous

containing or contaminated with a substance capable of injuring or killing a living thing leaving poisoned food to try to kill the roaches

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poisoned

2 of 2

verb

past tense of poison

as in tainted

to affect slightly with something morally bad or undesirable poisoning the minds of impressionable children with ethnic hatred

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms

as in polluted

to make unfit for use by the addition of something harmful or undesirable exhaust fumes poisoning the air

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms

as in degraded

to lower in character, dignity, or quality this party partisanship poisons the national debate we should be having about this urgent problem

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as in turned

to cause to have often negative opinions formed without sufficient knowledge malicious rumors had poisoned many church members against the new pastor

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Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Recent Examples of poisoned

Verb

The video cuts to Swift living out exactly what Johnson’s been living through, revealing that Farrell poisoned Swift, leading to her death. — Nicole Fell, HollywoodReporter, 27 Sep. 2026 In her other case, Hogan has been accused of trying to falsify a paternity test in a custody battle with her ex-fiancé, who was not the same man who was allegedly poisoned. — Justin Muszynski, Hartford Courant, 25 Sep. 2026 Any attempt to rerun these social experiments as straight entertainment rather than cautionary tales, even while removing the chance of bodily harm, is poisoned at the root. — Alison Herman, Variety, 23 Sep. 2026 Ten lions found dead in a wildlife reserve in Tanzania are suspected to have been poisoned, according to wildlife officials. — Kristin Wright, NPR, 20 Sep. 2026 The attacks escalated this summer, with 16 trees — 13 Jeffrey pines and three white firs — poisoned on three occasions between May and early August. — Alex Wigglesworth, Los Angeles Times, 19 Sep. 2026 The same six trees from 2023 were poisoned again the following year, town officials told The Bee. — Andrew Graham, Sacbee.com, 17 Sep. 2026 Over 30 people across four states have been poisoned by bacterial toxins after getting intravenous (IV) drips at wellness clinics, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. — Beth Mole, ArsTechnica, 17 Sep. 2026 And so, in many ways, the well of public opinion was already poisoned. — Jeff Ihaza, Rolling Stone, 14 Sep. 2026

Recent Examples of Synonyms for poisoned

Adjective

With the throne disengaged from governance, petitions and reports from officials piled up unread, crucial state posts went unfilled, and the imperial bureaucracy splintered amid poisonous factional infighting.

— Carl Minzner, Foreign Affairs, 5 Oct. 2026
With this potential even more poisonous investments in the bloated and indebted Paramount behemoth, there’s even more reason to reject it.

— Abigail Disney, New York Daily News, 28 Sep. 2026

Definition of poisonous

Verb

In a world riven by democratic backsliding and polluted with AI slop, there’s something seductive about the idea of retreating to a wild, unnavigable place where no one can follow you—because you’ll be submerged up to your eyeballs.

— Literary Hub, Literary Hub, 15 Oct. 2026
In the northern part of the district, the waterfront is polluted by ships.

— Jemma Stephenson, San Diego Union-Tribune, 10 Sep. 2026

Definition of polluted

Verb

With so few ancient samples of dodo DNA surviving—and that which does exist having degraded over the centuries—the analytic and number-crunching power of AI is just what’s needed to fill in the genetic blanks.

— Jeffrey Kluger, Time, 14 Oct. 2026
Russia’s constant attacks on factories, energy supply systems and the railways means that steel supply to the Ukrainian armed forces is also being degraded.

— Kamal Ahmed, Fortune, 12 Oct. 2026

Definition of degraded

Verb

The transient air pressure of a passing thunderstorm, or the excessive production of cow patties, spoiled the chips.

— Gideon Lewis-Kraus, New Yorker, 19 Oct. 2026
Audiences intent on not having the whole thing spoiled snapped up tickets, with A24 reporting that there were more than 2,000 sellouts.

— Brent Lang, IndieWire, 18 Oct. 2026

Definition of spoiled

Verb

Yuzhou Zhang, a biologist at Northwest A&F University in China, was studying how plants move in response to gravity in a laboratory in Austria when one of his agar plates became contaminated with airborne microbes.

— Joanna Thompson, Scientific American, 17 Oct. 2026
Anything contaminated with feces containing Shigella could cause an infection — even a very small amount of it.

— Charlotte Observer, Charlotte Observer, 16 Oct. 2026

Definition of contaminated

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poison

poisoned

poisoning

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“Poisoned.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/poisoned. Accessed 21 Oct. 2026.

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Synonyms of poisoned

adjective

verb

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