We Dutch solve this problem by having a single word for "poison", "venom and "toxin"¹. Everybody still knows what you mean and nobody gets to be pedantic.

¹ and "badly compressed looping animation"

▲ pjmlp 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Same in Portuguese, veneno.

Although there are plenty of other opportunities for pedantry, especially when we take regionalisms, and other Portuguese speaking countries into account.

▲ OptionOfT a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Vergif.

I don't know how you get from 'ver' to badly compressed.

(And I'm a native Flemish speaker, but living in the USA for 8+ years, so I barely, if ever speak it).

▲ tharkun__ a day ago | parent | next [-]

Remove Ver, add t and you got German: Gift

Vergiftet would be past tense.

Funny that in English gift is a word but entirely different meaning.

Languages are fun, especially in Europe where they're all different but all so related but everyone does not want to admit it.

▲ animal531 17 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's probably the same, for example in Afrikaans its just gif. Vergif is the verb action of doing it, and vergiftig the same past tense of it having happened previously.

▲ thaumasiotes 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Funny that in English gift is a word but entirely different meaning.

In English it maintains its original Germanic meaning derived from the verb give.

The sense of "poison" in German comes from a euphemistic use of "gift". (Literally 'something given' but actually used to calque Greek "dosis", which also literally meant 'something given', but was used to mean 'dose [of medicine]'.)

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gift#Etymology

Summing up, the reason gift is a word in English with an entirely different meaning from what it has in German is that everyone in Germany forgot what gift meant.

(The reason it's gift and not something more like yift is the Danelaw.)

	▲	tharkun__ 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This is one of the reasons I like HN: Random knowledge transfer like this. Appreciated! Also: in German Dosis is the word for dose. `Die Dosis macht das Gift` (the dose makes the poison)

▲ stevekemp 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> all so related but everyone does not want to admit it.

I'm laughing in Finnish..

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tharkun__ 11 hours ago | parent [-]

Hehe, you found the exception that proves the rule :P

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SllX 11 hours ago | parent [-]

And Basque, Maltese, Turkish and Georgian.

Magyar (Hungarian) and Finnish are both Uralic languages along with Estonian and the Sámi languages, but none of these are related to the Indo-European languages common in the other parts of Europe.

And while most of Europe’s extant languages are in the Indo-European language family, there’s still a fair number of differences between Albanian, Germanic, Hellenic, Celtic, Romantic and Slavic languages.

	▲	tharkun__ 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Oh for sure there are many differences, that comes with them being different languages, countries, ethnicity. You can do this on many levels. The point was essentially what you're showing here: People focusing on all the differences instead of shared history, languages influencing each other and how we're all not that different in the end. If you want to, even within what are nowadays countries and what outsiders would say is "one language" and "one ethnicity", you can start focusing on differences and make people dislike each other.

▲ birdsongs 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In Norwegian, "gift" is poison. It's also the word for married (de er gift).

	▲	pantalaimon 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		In German "Mitgift" is what the bride gets from her family when she enters marriage.

▲ bruce343434 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In NL, just 'gif' is sufficient

▲ XCSme a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is the word "stamppot" ?

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usrnm 20 hours ago | parent [-]

Just "food". Any kind of Dutch food fits the description.

	▲	skrebbel 19 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This is true, notably a kroket is both looping and badly compressed.

▲ samlinnfer a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Same in Chinese (毒). But it is a better solution just not to give pedants the time of the day.

▲ gambiting a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Same in Polish. You'd just call both of these "trucizna".

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mbel a day ago | parent [-]

Not really, we have both „jad” (venom) and „trucizna” (poison).

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gtech1 a day ago | parent | next [-]

How does this happen ? The poster above you isn't really Polish ? How can someone that claims to know Polish not know there's two different words ?

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gambiting 19 hours ago | parent [-]

Obviously I know "jad" but I don't see any issue with calling venom "trucizna". Natural languages aren't C++ and you don't get compiler errors when you speak - to me, there is no issue calling both venoms and poison trucizna. Polish dictionary doesn't seem to contradict it either:

https://sjp.pwn.pl/slowniki/trucizna.html

The point is, both are correct(afaik) while in English venom and poison are definitely two different things.

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mbel 18 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Nobody would say „trujący wąż” (poisonous snake) or „jadowity grzyb” (venomous mushroom). The distinction is similar to English. There are exceptions and contexts where it can be used interchangeably but arguably the same is true for English.

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gambiting 17 hours ago | parent [-]

>>Nobody would say „trujący wąż”

No? That's how I've always said it. "Ta żmija jest trująca" - don't see any issue here. Jadowity grzyb I'll agree.

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gtech1 13 hours ago | parent [-]

This is fascinating, assuming you are both natives of Poland. Is there as much language variance in Poland as in, say, Italy ?

	▲	gambiting 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		No idea how much variance there is in Italy so not sure how to answer that question.

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thaumasiotes 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> The point is, both are correct(afaik) while in English venom and poison are definitely two different things.

No, the situation in English matches your description exactly: all of these things are called poison. The word venom is almost never used in natural speech.

Furthermore, if you ask English speakers what the difference between poison and venom is, by far the two most common responses will be "there isn't one" and "I don't know". icyfox is just looking to be annoying.

(Another popular option will probably be "it's called venom when you're talking about snakes", which explains roughly 100% of use of venom in natural speech.)

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usrnm 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

And in Russian we use "jad" ("яд" in cyrillic) for both. Although there is the word "отрава", which can be used for poisons and "яд" is closer to "venom" the difference is almost non-existant and both are often used interchangeably.