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Toxins Are Often Found in Nature
Long before chemists started creating poisons from scratch, humans were employing natural toxins for killing weeds and insects. For centuries South American tribes have used the toxin curare, extracted from a native vine, to tip their arrows. The garden flower called wolfsbane or monkshood is the source of aconite, an extremely potent toxin. The common flower known as jimsonweed contains the deadly poison scopolamine. And the castor-oil plant yields the almost unbelievably poisonous toxin called ricin. Today we hear health advisers of all kinds talk about ridding the body of toxins; but they're usually pretty vague about which ones they mean, and most of these "toxins" wouldn't be called that by biologists.
Examples of toxin in a Sentence
Karen Garcia, Los Angeles Times, 10 May 2025
By starting with low doses of the toxins and gradually building up to sustaining real bites, Friede, a former construction worker from Wisconsin, has developed a tolerance to many of the world’s deadliest snake species.
—Lillian Ali, Smithsonian Magazine, 9 May 2025
She was promptly treated for Toxic shock syndrome (TSS), a rare, but potentially fatal condition where toxins spread into the bloodstream.
—Cara Lynn Shultz, People.com, 9 May 2025
The worms are also venomous, Verdes told the news outlet, and her research is still trying to understand what toxins are used to make the group of marine worms effective predators.
—Irene Wright, Miami Herald, 7 May 2025
See All Example Sentences for toxin
Cite this Entry
“Toxin.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/toxin. Accessed 21 May. 2025.
Copy CitationKids Definition
derived from Latin tox- "poisonous" and English -in "chemical compound"; tox- from toxicum "poison," from Greek toxikon "arrow poison," from toxon "bow, arrow" — related to intoxicate, toxic see Word History at intoxicate
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