This is my favourite gopher snake encounter on the Bay Trail in Sunnyvale. Basenji for scale. (She was on a leash, of course).
I think it is pretty well known and actually is an important distinction to make.
If you found a dead poisonous creature you might want to treat it differently to a dead venomous creature.
One that size can swallow small rabbits.
I generally don’t eat any dead creatures I just happen across.
Google Ngram result on “poisonous snake” vs “venomous snake”.
Just for fun, a picture of some Florida Pine Snakes we bred and hatched back in 2007. Tough little customers right from the get-go! All were released into appropriate native habitats.
I don’t doubt it is popular, that doesn’t mean it is accurate…“fighting ignorance” ring a bell?
Yeah, that’s what I’m doing.
You are, for a reason I cannot fathom, being a bit precious about this. I’m not sure why you even replied to my original post.
I know full well that people use poisonous/venomous interchangeably. Such is the ebb and flow of the english language. If I weren’t aware of the common (technically incorrect) usage what would be the point of me posting the clarification? What I said was merely a little aside, a footnote…no snark intended.
By taking umbrage at me pointing out that there is actually a proper biological difference between those terms you are certainly doing something, but “fighting ignorance” it ain’t.
I shall leave it there.
I was at Carlsbad Caverns today and saw this gopher snake alongside the road. A nice healthy specimen that seemed perfectly content to hang out for a few minutes while I snapped some pics.
I am fighting your ignorance that it is somehow incorrect to refer to a snake that injects venom with its bite as a poisonous snake. A rattlesnake is a venomous snake. It is also a poisonous snake. A poison dart frog is a poisonous frog, but not a venomous frog.
You thought that it was appropriate to correct Sunny Daze, so I’m not sure why you’re being so touchy about me correcting you.
Because you are incorrect. What you are saying, in essence, is that it is “correct” to say rattlesnakes are “poisonous” because lots of people incorrectly use the term that way. While we can agree that this means that people will understand you if you say a snake is “poisonous”, that does not make the use of the term “correct.”
Citation?
“Venomous snake” has never been significantly more common than “poisonous snake” going back 300 years, and for the past century “poisonous snake” has been decisively the more common phrase. This is how language is defined, not by relatively recent quibbles that are invented out of whole cloth. It’s also why dictionaries include this (correct) usage of “poisonous”.
You’re missing the point, I think.
Here is an example of a Dictionary making the precise distinction in question.
An animal is “venomous” if it uses “venom” to do its dirty work. An animal is “poisonous” by the same reasoning if it itself has some poison aspect. A rattlesnake is by this “correct” (meaning here properly derived) definition not “poisonous” because you can eat a rattlesnake, hold a rattlesnake, smell a rattlesnake, etc., without being harmed. The snake itself has no deleterious effect upon you.
Now, the fact that people have used the term “poisonous” to describe things that are not truly “poisonous” for a long time simply means that a person is abiding by accustomed usage in saying a rattlesnake is a poisonous snake, for example. But that’s why what Novelty Bobble did is picking a “nit”: the distinction being made by that poster was to show that there is a precise meaning for venomous and one for poisonous, and properly used, the former, not the latter, applies to a snake like a rattlesnake. If it weren’t for the fact that common usage tends to ignore the distinction, then it wouldn’t be a nit-pick; it would be a basic, “you’re using that wrong!”
No one is arguing that a distinction can’t be made. If you and Novelty Bubble want to use venomous and poisonous in this way, please do so, but don’t pretend that your stylistic choice is anything other than what it is: a personal preference.
And you can find just as many dictionary entries that don’t bother with a distinction. From Google:
(of an animal) producing poison as a means of attacking enemies or prey; venomous.
adjective: poisonous
“a poisonous snake”
synonyms: venomous, deadly
“a poisonous snake”
Yes, it does mean it’s accurate. When a majority of people use a word in a particular way it’s not wrong, it’s the common usage. It’s what the word means to most people.
You’re free to use your own idiolect, of course, but don’t presume to impose it when most people are using the meaning that most people use.
I was trying to catch a black rat snake in our yard one day (my gf likes to relocate snakes away from our home to spare the toads and chipmunks). The snake was lying in dead leaves and did a very impressive rattle. Even though I knew the species, it made me jump.
I also use venomous and poisonous separately (poisonous means don’t eat it, venomous means it will sting you) but since language is a living and constantly evolving thing, once a term becomes the more common usage it becomes “correct” regardless of how it was in the past.
For better or worse. 
(Just as how I see people frequently misuse terms like “begging the question” on this board and I’ve resigned myself to the idea that they are probably “correct” now.)
Growing up in Ohio, lots of kids (like me) would catch them (we called them “black snakes”). They’d bluff and bluster and then try to escape. And they’d bite if you let them, of course. But once they calmed down and were handled regularly, they’d be as tame as could be.
The evidence indicates that the distinct meanings you use are the newer usage. And there’s nothing wrong with that. 