From Poison to Potable

In December last year I discussed the word gift (12 21 14). But what I did not share at that festive time is that in German Gift means poison (as it does in Swedish, Dutch, and Danish). Last month I could have expounded upon poison on the Ides of March, but my father’s passing made that inappropriate. So let’s get into some poison today (figuratively, not literally).

Poison, while now both a noun and a verb, entered English as a noun first, in about 1200. It was first used as a verb around 1300. The word for any substance that is injurious to health up to and including being deadly can be used both figuratively and literally. It comes to English from Old French where it was spelled puison or poison until Modern French settled on poison.

In Old French poison was initially a drink, especially if medical in intent, then later a magic potion. The Old French got poison from the Latin word potionem which was a form of the word potare. (Raison and rationem had the same changes of t in Latin to s in French, but reason and rational are words for another week.) While Latin is the source of the Italian pozione and the Spanish pocion, etymonline.com suggests “the more usual Indo-European word for this is represented in English by virus.” The Old English word for poison was ator, and we retain ator in a word for a spider (or a person who’s as bad as a spider), attercop. (Attercop was an entirely new word to me. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered it before.)

The Old French had the word enerber or enherber to use when talking about killing with poison plants, hence poison took time to develop the English meaning in French.

Perhaps you realized that the word potion shares the Latin root word potionem. Potion also came to English from Old French, where it had become pocion. It then (as now) is a drink especially if it is medicinal or magical, although it can also refer to a poisonous drink. And etymonline.com shares that potus (now an acronym for President of the United States) “as a past participle adjective in Latin meant ‘drunken.’” Remember: they said it, not me.

Potus is a form of the word potare which is also the source of the word potable. Potable as an adjective refers to any liquid suitable for drinking. It came to English in the early 1400s, also from Old French, where it was also spelled potable. “Drinkable” in Late Latin is potabilis, explaining how the Old French got from potare to potable.

And that is how you get etymologically from poison to potable. It is easier than the process of getting from salt water to potable water (which, in one word, is desalination).