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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
Hannah Coates, Vogue, 28 Dec. 2024
The Search For Clean, Delicious, And Nutritious Coffee As a connoisseur of brews, James understood that all across the globe, people were consistently sipping commercial grade coffees laced with harmful chemicals, pesticides and toxins.
—Bianca Salonga, Forbes, 26 Dec. 2024
Kidney disease: Chronic kidney disease can lead to nerve damage, sometimes called uremic neuropathy, from toxins that accumulate if the kidneys aren't functioning well.
—Ruth Jessen Hickman, Md, Health, 23 Dec. 2024
Although the legal age for Botox—a toxin to prevent a muscle from moving for a limited time—is 18, some experts, like makeup artist Katie Moyer from Dallas, Texas, argue that starting too early isn't a good idea.
—Gord Magill, Newsweek, 21 Dec. 2024
See all Example Sentences for toxin 
Dictionary Entries Near toxin
Cite this Entry
“Toxin.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/toxin. Accessed 9 Jan. 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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