Word.ws English Dictionary

poisoning the well

poisoning the well is the present participle and gerund of poison the well.

Meaning of poison the well

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)

  1. (intransitive) To preemptively raise ad hominem arguments in order to discredit someone.
    Synonyms:
    taint the well
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see poison, the, well.

Questions about poisoning the well

What is poisoning the well the present participle and gerund of?
Poisoning the well is the present participle and gerund of poison the well.

Words near poisoning the well in the dictionary

  1. poisoneth
  2. poisonful
  3. poisoning
  4. poisoning attack
  5. poisoning attacks
  6. poisoning the well
  7. poisonings
  8. poisonless
  9. poisonlessness
  10. poisonlike
  11. poisonmaker

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: poisoning the well (page history and authors); 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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-poisoning the well.ogg.

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