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Glite Dictionary
what's your poison

what's your poison

2 9.2
To ask someone informally what alcoholic drink they want
  • idiom
  • Informal
translation icon : ¿cuál es tu veneno?
  • "What's your poison, brother?

Examples

  • Okay, Gary, what's your poison?

  • As we settled at the bar, he asked, "What's your poison?"

  • When meeting new friends, it's common to ask, 'What's your poison?' to know their drink preference.

Surface Forms

what's your poison main

Morphology

what's + your + poison

The phrase uses 'poison' metaphorically to mean someone's preferred (usually alcoholic) drink, so the literal parts ('what's' + 'your' + 'poison') do not directly yield the idiomatic sense of 'what would you like to drink' without cultural/pragmatic knowledge. Context may allow a learner to guess the meaning, but the metaphorical shift is not fully predictable for a B1 learner who only knows the constituent words.

Etymology

What's your poison comes from a joke that strong alcoholic drinks were called poison because they can harm you. So asking what's your poison is a playful way to ask which 'drink' someone wants.