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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
Ellise Shafer, Variety, 15 Apr. 2025
Vultures also have extremely strong stomach acid, don’t get food poisoning and are able to consume and neutralize anthrax, botulism and other bacteria and toxins in carcasses that would kill other animals, removing deadly threats from the environment.
—Gerald Imray, Chicago Tribune, 12 Apr. 2025
Tens of thousands of responders and survivors rely on the WTC Health Program to get treatment and medication and monitor injuries and illnesses caused by the toxins that swirled around Ground Zero during 9/11 and the weeks that followed.
—Thomas Tracy, New York Daily News, 6 Apr. 2025
The river is tainted with harmful toxins from industrial waste, trash and untreated sewage.
—Kimberly Dickson, San Diego Union-Tribune, 4 Apr. 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 22 Apr. 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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