A similar thing that's been bothering me is the meme about "The difference between poisonous and venomous is if you eat it and you die, it's poisonous, if it bi

A similar thing that's been bothering me is the meme about "The difference between poisonous and venomous is if you eat it and you die, it's poisonous, if it bites you and you die, it's venomous", with endless discussions about how it's wrong to call snakes poisonous. In reality, if you check the dictionary, poison is "any harmful substance", while venom is "a poison synthesized by an animal, usually for hunting or self-defence". The etymology of the words kind of sort of supports the meme, but I never managed to find historical evidence of the difference in meaning being as outlined. Both come from Latin, so it's not the case like cow vs beef where the Germanic word gets a new meaning because the language adopts a French word alongside it. Additionally no other European language makes that distinction and it's extremely rare for a concept to exist only in English. I've tried to hunt down where this confusion started and it seems to be some meme English teachers repeat, like "i before e except after c". Australians in particular are very invested in it.