poison the well
poison the well verb: to preemptively raise ad hominem arguments in order to discredit someone.
Verb
poison the well (third-person singular simple present poisons the well, present participle poisoning the well, simple past and past participle poisoned the well)
- To preemptively raise ad hominem arguments in order to discredit someone.
- Synonyms:
- taint the well
- Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see poison, the, well.
Synonyms of poison the well
- taint the well
Forms of poison the well
| third-person singular present | poisons the well |
|---|---|
| present participle | poisoning the well |
| past participle | poisoned the well |
| past | poisoned the well |
Origin of poison the well
First used figuratively by Catholic philosopher and Doctor of the Church John Henry Newman in his work Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864), evidently in reference to the wartime tactic of well poisoning.
Questions about poison the well
- What does poison the well mean?
- Poison the well means to preemptively raise ad hominem arguments in order to discredit someone.
- What part of speech is poison the well?
- Poison the well is a verb.
- What is the past tense of poison the well?
- The past tense of poison the well is poisoned the well.
Words near poison the well in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: poison the well (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-poison the well.wav.
Cite this entry: “poison the well.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/poison_the_well. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.