toxicity

noun tox·ic·i·ty \ täk-ˈsi-sə-tē \

|Updated on: 16 Aug 2018

Editor's Note: Did You Know?

Definition of toxicity

plural toxicities

: the quality or state of being toxic: such as

a : the quality, state, or relative degree of being poisonous

measuring the toxicity level of the soil

The toxicity of some chemical agents degrades significantly over time, so it is unclear how lethal the stockpiles are.
—David S. Cloud

Administering a cocktail of drugs would dilute the toxicities of the different drugs and minimize the development of viral resistance to them.
—Rudy M. Baum and Ron Dagani

b : an extremely harsh, malicious, or harmful quality

In the past few days, I've tuned in to C-SPAN to watch a number of the televised Senate debates, which illustrate all too vividly the toxicity of an uncivil tongue.
—Connie Schultz

In much of the ensuing commentary, court watchers worried that the justices' soaring rates of written dissents, nasty and personal attacks and scathing remarks read aloud from the bench bespeak a new toxicity in Supreme Court discourse.
—Dahlia Lithwick

See toxicity defined for English-language learners

Recent Examples of toxicity from the Web

The toxicity of the environment shreds the quality of conversation and deters meaningful participation in it.

— franklin foer, The Atlantic, "The Death of the Public Square," 6 July 2018
Yet few clinical trials have examined their toxicity in older populations.

— ankur parikh, STAT, "We need more answers about immunotherapy for the elderly," 22 June 2018
The therapeutic index is the ratio of a drug’s efficacy to its toxicity.

— richard klasco, New York Times, "Should Doctors Consider Body Size When Prescribing Drugs?," 8 June 2018
Indoor use of the pesticide was banned in 1984 because of its nerve toxicity.

— marie mccullough, Philly.com, "Man indicted for using banned pesticide that sickened Delaware family," 13 Apr. 2018
Ultimately, Helen is unwilling to stand by her man, despite social expectations and laws, especially when his toxicity may infect their son.

— matthew gilbert, BostonGlobe.com, "From the pages of these literary classics, TV for our times," 5 Apr. 2018
If the martial problems of those close to Trump isn’t proof enough of his toxicity, then the ability to reconcile after being pushed away from him is.

— adam k. raymond, Daily Intelligencer, "Within Trump’s Orbit, Divorce Is the Hot New Trend," 5 Apr. 2018
As a result, people taking this drug have to carefully balance its useful features against its toxicity.

— john timmer, Ars Technica, "Training plus a placebo may make a drug more effective," 3 Apr. 2018
De Bretton-Gordon said there were rumors of a Novichok test in Uzbekistan in the 1980s but that any of the remaining nerve agent from that experiment would have lost its toxicity — and that the agent used to poison the Skripals was extremely toxic.

— Washington Post, "Mystery surrounds how ex-Russian spy was poisoned in UK," 16 Mar. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'toxicity.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Did You Know?

Toxicity is often a relative thing; in the words of a famous old saying, "The dose makes the poison". Thus, it's possible to die from drinking too much water, and lives have been saved by tiny doses of arsenic. Even though botulinum toxin is the most toxic substance known, it's the basic ingredient in Botox, which is injected into the face to get rid of wrinkles. With some poisons, mere skin contact can be lethal; others are lethal when breathed into the lungs in microscopic amounts. To determine if a chemical will be officially called a poison, researchers often use the "LD50" test: If 50 milligrams of the substance for every kilogram of an animal's body weight results in the death of 50% of test animals, the chemical is a poison. But there are problems with such tests, and toxicity remains a very individual concept.