‘Pick your poison’ is said when offering someone a choice, often one where none of the alternatives is especially appealing. It began as a barman’s line, asking a customer what they would like to drink, and it is still used that way today. From there it broadened into a general expression for choosing between options that all carry some drawback, so that picking one is really just deciding which downside to live with. It can also be used lightly, simply asking someone to state their preference among several equally reasonable choices, with no hint of trouble attached.
What’s the origin of the phrase ‘pick your poison’?
The phrase grows out of a piece of 19th century slang in which ‘poison’ meant an alcoholic drink, a usage the Oxford English Dictionary records as colloquial and originally American. Calling a drink ‘poison’ was a joking exaggeration, and it gave rise to a whole family of bar-room invitations asking a customer to select their tipple.
Research by the etymologist Barry Popik has traced the sequence in print. ‘Nominate your poison’ appears in March 1864, ‘name your poison’ in December 1870, and ‘what’s your poison’ in July 1871. ‘Choose your poison’ followed, attested from at least 1888, and ‘pick your poison’ is the latest of the main forms to appear in print, attested from at least 1913. Of the group, ‘what’s your poison’ is probably still the most familiar as a direct offer of a drink.
The figurative sense, choosing between unappealing or risky options rather than between drinks, was already developing very early. The 1888 citation for ‘choose your poison’ was not about liquor at all but about voting, applied to the choice between Democrats and Republicans. That kind of extended use, treating any decision as a choice of ‘poisons’, has stayed attached to the phrase ever since, and it is this broader sense that ‘pick your poison’ carries most often today, even though its roots lie firmly at the bar.