Dictionary

ratsbane en · NOUN

Etymology

From rat's + bane. Compare henbane.

Meanings

1. (countable, uncountable) Rat poison; white arsenic.
   • The Gadfly’s venom, fifty times distilled, Is mingled with the vomit of the Leech, In due proportion, and black ratsbane, which That very Rat, who, like the Pontic tyrant, Nurtures himself on poison, dare not touch;— 1820, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Oedipus Tyrannus; Or, Swellfoot The Tyrant: A Tragedy in Two Acts:
   • Before him set the grim baron, with a face worthy of the father of such a daughter, and looking daggers and rat's bane. 1835, [Washington Irving], “Abbotsford”, in Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey (The Crayon Miscellany; no. 2), Philadelphia, Pa.: [Henry Charles] Carey, [Isaac] Lea, & Blanchard, →OCLC, pages 40–41:

Forms