venom

An animal toxin intended for defensive or offensive use; a biological poison delivered by bite, sting, etc., to protect an animal or to kill its prey.

[…] 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...

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 […]

Feeling or speech marked by spite or malice; vitriol.

The venom of such looks, we fairly hope, / Have lost their quality, and that this day / Shall change all griefs and quarrels into love.

[…] 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 […]

To infect with venom; to envenom; to poison.

1566, Thomas Blundeville (translator and editor), The Fower Chiefyst Offices Belongyng to Horsemanshippe, London, Chapter 36, […] washe all the filth away with warme water, and annoynte the place with Hony and Fytch flower myngled together. But beware you touche none of the kirnelles with your bare finger, for feare of venoming the place, which is very apt for a Fistula to breede in.

Let’s leave the hermit pity with our mothers, / And when we have our armours buckled on, / The venom’d vengeance ride upon our swords, / Spur them to ruthful work, rein them from ruth.

Poisonous, poisoned; (figuratively) pernicious.

Why should the worm intrude the maiden bud? / Or hateful cuckoos hatch in sparrows’ nests? / Or toads infect fair founts with venom mud?

[…] it is stopp’d with other flattering sounds, / As praises, of whose taste the wise are fond, / Lascivious metres, to whose venom sound / The open ear of youth doth always listen;