I was looking for the native word used before どく (which is obviously a loanword). In Kagoshima-ben its どっ in Okinawan ドゥク /ルク which also seem like loanwords from chinese. Thanks in advance.
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1No results in dictionary of Oxford NINJAL Corpus of Old Japanese (ONCOJ) project: poison, toxin, venom.– ArfreverCommented Aug 10 at 23:49
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1Why is どく obviously a loanword...? 🤔– istrasciCommented Aug 11 at 0:23
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If I had to invent something, then maybe 死{し}に物{もの}, 死{し}なせ物{もの}, 死{し}に実{み}, 死{し}なせ実{み}. (実{み} here meaning "substance".)– ArfreverCommented Aug 11 at 0:29
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2@istrasci 毒{どく} is 音読み, borrowed from Middle Chinese 毒 *dowk (Zhengzhang Shangfang's reconstruction: */duok̚/). Author of question asked for "native word", so native Japanese...– ArfreverCommented Aug 11 at 0:37
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3Native word is not the same as 訓読み, although majority of 訓読み are probably native words. There are some ancient borrowings from Koreanic and maybe Mongolic, Tungusic etc., which are now treated as native words. Besides this, there are cases such as 頁{ページ} and 雹{ひょう}.– ArfreverCommented Aug 11 at 0:46
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2 Answers
It appears that whaterver native words for toxin/poison were replaced by Sino-Japanese word(s) early on, and there is no well-known and proven theory of what they were. That said, あし (adjective) and あしきもの (noun) could be good candidates.
高麗国、得志が帰らんと欲う意を知りて、毒{あしきもの}を与えて殺す
from 日本書紀 via https://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/000093/files/526_28258.html
(The kun reading might be later addition, but I assume the "later" is still quite old.)
Other sources have
- 毒気: あしきき、あしきいき、あしきけ
- 毒酒: あしきさけ
Also, there is a theory that シキミ, the name of a toxic plant, derives from あしきみ（悪しき実). https://www.hokeniryo.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/shokuhin/dokusou/11.html
If not that, considering numbness is a common symptom of toxic plants, words like しびれる（しびる） could have worked well enough in practice. Pragmatically, you can say "plant that causes numbness" or "plant that makes you sick" when you mean "toxic plant", and successfully communicate in a lot of cases.
First, whether or not 毒 should be treated as a loanword can be a bit complicated for a novice. It isn't a 和語 (see 精選版 日本国語大辞典 's 2nd definition), but is a fairly old borrowing and rooted to the Japanese language. My dictionaries cites several quotations from after 1700s, and some from around the year 1000. 毒 also has many expressions like 気の毒, 毒を喰らわば皿まで, etc. and barely recognised as a loanword in daily usage.
That said, assuming you are looking for native Wago, I would say there are none, at least none known commonly. Here are my observations:
- Personally I cannot come up with any word. As stated above, 毒 is fairly rooted to the language.
- Japanese dictionaries, including 広辞苑, lists no synonyms in the article for 毒.
- One Japanese thesaurus I looked up lists 病毒, 毒素 and so on, but includes no Wago terms.
- 毒 as a Kanji has no kun-reading: it doesn't prove anything, but because we often borrow Kanji for Japanese-native words, if we had a Wago term for poison we would probably have used 毒 for the kanji.
- See Arfrever's comment on the question.
- There is a family name 毒島 (ぶすじま), but it seems the reading is from 附子, a specific kind of toxin made from a plant (Aconitum). So it isn't a word for poison/toxin.
So, I wasn't able to find a candidate after a bit of searching.
