ratsbane

• “Early in June Judith, walking in the wood, brought home the splendid red wood lily, and a cluster too of "ratsbane," with its flowers like a little crown of white wax.”

  Judith of the Cumberlands

• “We spend some time with "The Shakespeare Insult Kit," which offers choice adjectives and nouns from the Bard's work that one can configure in any number of combinations, such as "thou dankish, fat-kidneyed moldwarp" or "thou mammering, onion-eyed ratsbane.”

  The Wall Street Journal: Buttering Up vs. Taking Down

• “I had as lief they would put ratsbane in my mouth as offer to stop it with security.”

  The second part of King Henry the Fourth

• “Roaring Ralph Stackpole, its natural ugliness greatly increased by countless scratches and spots of blood, the result of his leap down the ledge of rocks, when first set upon by the Indians, and his eyes squinting daggers and ratsbane, especially while he was giving utterance to that gallinaceous slogan with which he was wont to express his appetite for conflict, and with which he now concluded his unceremonious salutation.”

  Nick of the Woods

• “How many souls have they been the means of destroying by their ignorance and corrupt doctrine? preaching that which was no better for their souls than ratsbane to the body, for filthy lucre's sake.”

  The Riches of Bunyan

• “If there are rat holes have them stopped with pieces of brick, and broken glass bottles; never use ratsbane without the greatest caution, as it is a dangerous remedy.”

  Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers

• “If his Lordship had sent me an infusion of ratsbane in the loving-cup, I should have taken it much more kindly at his hands.”

  The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 70, August, 1863

• “All possible endeavours were used also to destroy the mice and rats, especially the latter, by laying ratsbane and other poisons for them, and a prodigious multitude of them were also destroyed.”

  A Journal Of The Plague Year

• “The news that Blair was coming to the evening meal was highly disconcerting, and the worried cook even contemplated the possibility of doctoring the American's plate of soup with ratsbane or hemlock.”

  Kathleen

• “Who gives anything to poor Tom? whom the foul fiend hath led through fire and through flame, through ford and whirlpool, o’er bog and quagmire; that hath laid knives under his pillow, and halters in his pew; set ratsbane by his porridge; made him proud of heart, to ride on a bay trotting-horse over four-inched bridges, to course his own shadow for a traitor.”

  Act III. Scene IV. King Lear

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