poison pill
noun
: a financial tactic or provision used by a company to make an unwanted takeover prohibitively expensive or less desirable
Examples of poison pill in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
Littering appropriations bills with culture-war poison pills — as House Republicans had done in versions of spending legislation last year — would have doomed its chances of passage.
—
Jacob Bogage, Washington Post, 8 Mar. 2024
Every now and then, science serves up poison pills.
—Kc Cole, Smithsonian Magazine, 8 Mar. 2024
That comes with a backside poison pill of potentially losing their franchise quarterback via free agency in 2025.
—Clarence E. Hill Jr., Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 27 Feb. 2024
His poison pill restriction already complicates matters.
—Sean Keeler, The Denver Post, 5 Feb. 2024
Woolf’s friend and sometime lover Vita Sackville-West and Vita’s husband, Harold Nicolson (a government official who was on the list), both carried poison pills for the day the Germans landed.
—Claudia Roth Pierpont, The New Yorker, 19 Feb. 2024
The bill, though, contained a poison pill: In order to send the Middle East nation additional funds, Biden would have to gut new funding for the Internal Revenue Service.
—Erin B. Logan, Los Angeles Times, 29 Nov. 2023
Attaching a 702 amendment to any stopgap spending bill at this hour, however, could serve as a poison pill, eliciting stiff opposition from House Republicans—such as the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan—for whom FISA remains a four-letter word.
—WIRED, 14 Nov. 2023
Like many public institutions at the time, New Deal leisure infrastructure was often segregated—a poison pill that not only limited public accessibility, but helped usher in mass closures.
—Kate Aronoff, The New Republic, 15 Aug. 2023
Jacob Bogage, Washington Post, 8 Mar. 2024
Every now and then, science serves up poison pills.
—Kc Cole, Smithsonian Magazine, 8 Mar. 2024
That comes with a backside poison pill of potentially losing their franchise quarterback via free agency in 2025.
—Clarence E. Hill Jr., Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 27 Feb. 2024
His poison pill restriction already complicates matters.
—Sean Keeler, The Denver Post, 5 Feb. 2024
Woolf’s friend and sometime lover Vita Sackville-West and Vita’s husband, Harold Nicolson (a government official who was on the list), both carried poison pills for the day the Germans landed.
—Claudia Roth Pierpont, The New Yorker, 19 Feb. 2024
The bill, though, contained a poison pill: In order to send the Middle East nation additional funds, Biden would have to gut new funding for the Internal Revenue Service.
—Erin B. Logan, Los Angeles Times, 29 Nov. 2023
Attaching a 702 amendment to any stopgap spending bill at this hour, however, could serve as a poison pill, eliciting stiff opposition from House Republicans—such as the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan—for whom FISA remains a four-letter word.
—WIRED, 14 Nov. 2023
Like many public institutions at the time, New Deal leisure infrastructure was often segregated—a poison pill that not only limited public accessibility, but helped usher in mass closures.
—Kate Aronoff, The New Republic, 15 Aug. 2023
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'poison pill.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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“Poison pill.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/poison%20pill. Accessed 24 Apr. 2024.
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