venomとは

意味・読み方・使い方

発音

• IPA^(key): /ˈvɛnəm/

名詞

venom (countable かつ uncountable, 複数形 venoms)

1. A poison carried by an animal, usually injected into an enemy or prey by biting or stinging.
   • c. 1610, William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, Act II, Scene 1,^[1]

     […] There may be in the cup

     A spider steep’d, and one may drink, depart,

     And yet partake no venom, for his knowledge

     Is not infected:

   • 1634, John Milton, Arcades in Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin, London: Humphrey Moseley, Song, p. 54,^[2]

     And from the Boughs brush off the evil dew,

     And heal the harms of thwarting thunder blew,

     Or what the cross dire-looking Planet smites,

     Or hurtfull Worm with canker’d venom bites.

   • 1818, Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Chapter 20,^[3]

     I will watch with the wiliness of a snake, that I may sting with its venom.

   • 1968, Truman Capote, interview published in Mademoiselle, August 1968,^[4]

     The serious artist […] [is] obsessed by his material; it’s like a venom working in his blood and the art is the antidote.

2. (figuratively) Feeling or speech marked by spite or malice; vitriol.
   • c. 1598, William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act V, Scene 2,^[5]

     The venom of such looks, we fairly hope,

     Have lost their quality, and that this day

     Shall change all griefs and quarrels into love.

   • 1790, Richard Cumberland, The Observer, London: C. Dilly, Volume 5, No. 130, p. 48,^[6]

     […] as I was feasting my jaundiced eye one morning with a certain newspaper, which I was in the habit of employing as the vehicle of my venom, I was startled at discovering myself conspicuously pointed out in an angry column as a cowardly defamer […]

   • 1819, Walter Scott, The Bride of Lammermoor, Chapter 33,^[7]

     “My daughter […] has no occasion to dispute the identity of your person; the venom of your present language is sufficient to remind her that she speaks with the mortal enemy of her father.”

   • 1938, Lawrence Durrell, The Black Book, New York: Open Road, 2012, Book Three,

     History is a study which has none of the venom of reality in it.

   • 1966, James Workman, The Mad Emperor, Melbourne, Sydney: Scripts, page 62:

     The attack was so unwarranted and delivered with such venom that his unpreparedness for it left him speechless.

   • 2007, Roger Ebert, Your Movie Sucks, Kansas City: Andrews McMeel, Introduction,^[8]

     Some of these reviews were written in joyous zeal. Others with glee. Some in sorrow, some in anger, and a precious few with venom, of which I have a closely guarded supply.

同意語

• (poison carried by an animal): atter (古風な用法, dialectal)

派生語