I still think it looks like a roach. Mainly from size and color… I’ve seen plenty of both. Try it yourselves. Smoke and observe.
I think most of you are thinking of a modern day roach. Back then rolling paper was often tan, or brown, and the roach was almost always flattened. It looked much like a cockroach there behind the matches. You’d take it out, split one of the matches to make a clip, and fire up. The 1938 time period, and the culture it came out of, only strengthens the beatnic’s story. These guys hung out in that culture.
The provenance is, IMO, obvious.
Waitaminute… I thought that roaches hadn’t changed significantly in the past hundred million years. What’s so different about the modern-day ones? 
again the term “cockroach/cucaracha” is used to describe a user of marijuana. a “roach” is what you would/will find amoungst the “cockroaches”. samclem- the works i am talking about was a review of ‘indiginous’ users, the mexicans, but more twords the Native users(indians, native people from mexico, possibly “meztizos”). the title? i’d have to go and look it up, in the college library, i was just browsing the periodicals, it was there, with other desriptions of substance abuse from the early 1800’s and 1900’s. …i really find it hard to believe that anyone would say a ‘joint’ stub looks like an actual insect. ( unless they were really high, maybe on acid, or peyote,- you listening mr. casteneda?)
…oh yeah some people who use alchohol are called- get ready----------alcolholics. wow, really blows my mind.
enjoy…:smack: :smack: :smack: :smack:
ps:…anybody remember “Cheech and Chong”? in the “Next Movie”, Chong is sitting at his kitchen table, a ROACH crawls across the table, he plays with it, letting it crawl-then puts it back to crawl from its start again- then he smacks it!!! he holds it, looks at it, then sticks it in his ‘dong’ pipe, and then he Smokes it, hilarious…rent the movie. lots of fun, almost pitiful now. the Chongster is doing hard time in federal prison now for selling pipes on the internet, oh well, better him than me.:wally :smack: :dubious: :rolleyes: :o 
;j :eek:
So, old wise one, is the small amount of booze left in a drink glass called an “ohol”? Of course not. It’s called “dregs”, 'cause it looks like a big scoop shovel on a barge. :rolleyes:
I doubt that the mexican nickname for cucaracha is, or ever was, “roach”.
Think for a minute, use your imagination, and forget what you might have read.
How many objects with a nickname look exactly like the subject of that nickname? The nickname is generally based upon a resemblance, physical or situational, or both, to another object.
Does a “smiley face” really look like anyone you know? Or a “winky”.
Fly in the ointment.
“Dregs” and “dredge” are almost certainly NOT related.
Dregs is cited in English first from about 1378, in a version of Piers Plowman, meaning a "sediment of liquors. It goes WAY back before that in other languages.
Dredge as a thing to scoop up stuff from the water doesn’t appear until 1471, and then in Scots.
“Almost”?
Heh heh.
samclem, you slay me.
My brother lives somewhere around Cleveland. What is it, the drinking water?
Right.
You fucked up when you though you were being smart and said that “dredge” and '“dregs” were from the same source. They aren’t.
:rolleyes: = “Yeah, right” = “Hardly”
Now read this again, slowly this time;
It’s called “dregs”, 'cause it looks like a big scoop shovel on a barge. :rolleyes:
My vocabulary fails me, but there’s a term for a statement thats so outlandish it’s obviously not meant to be taken at face value.
I am smart.
Sorry, mangeorge. I missed the smilie face first time through. I know you’re smart.
Must have been that second beer I had.
Fallacy. And citing examples of nicknames that support your claim doesn’t really validate it, since one can also state nicknames that are not based upon a resemblance (the term “cop” for instance). Point is, slangs and nicknames can be based on a variety of sources, not just resemblance to something else.
Thus, your theory is as valid as the one I posed.
Well, not exactly. You’re sourced to personal experience in the 1960’s, smoking with the beatniks, but as the article stated, the term was used way before that. There was already an established marijuana culture way before the Beatniks and the Beat generation; they’re not the authority on marijuana culture.
Rezwar’s claims that Mexican marijuana users, including Pancho Villa’s men, were called “cockroaches” are correct, and with the mexican song “La Cucaracha” popularizing this and the huge influx of Mexican immigrants heading for America at the turn of the century, it’s a much more credible origin for the modern American term “roach”, as opposed to saying flattened brown partially smoked joints resemble cockroaches. Which they do not. Unless, as has been stated, you’re under the influence of more potent psychoactive drugs.
–
“How do you know she’s a witch?”
" … She looks like one!"
Fallacy? Nah. More a generalization, the clue being “is generally based”.
Cops are not objects.
Pizza is an object. (pizza face)
Cauliflower is an object. (cauliflower ear)
Street sweeper is an object. (gun)
Iced tea is an object. (cocktail)
Whew!
I’m not sure which timeline you’re following, but the one in Cecil’s article is out of the (Black) music scene in Harlem, N.Y. The other (Mexican) timeline attempts to trace the use of “cucaracha”, referring to a people, and it’s magical transformation to the english slang “roach”, further transformed to a nickname for a partially smoked (an important distinction) joint.
As for appearance? Sometimes you gotta use a little imagination.
None of the Mexican people I knew as a youngster called the thing a “roach”.
None. All the Black folks and (a few) beats did. This was 30 or so years after Cecil’s shaky reference.
It seems to me that if Martin Booth’s claim were true, roach would refer to any joint.
The fallacy being hasty generalization.
In fact, you commit it here again:
None of the Mexican people I knew as a youngster called the thing a “roach”.
And therefore … ?
Going back, like I said, citing examples is pointless, since there are also plenty of examples contrary to it.
Marijuana is a slang for cannabis. And marijuana resembles what? What about reefer? Or pot? Wang is a nickname for penis. And a wang looks like what, exactly? And does John really look like a toilet? Oh, and what about the Jolly Roger?
Again, nicknames, even of objects, can be based on a variety of things, not just resemblance.
As for the so-called “magical transformation”, run cucaracha through a Spanish to English translator, and lose the cock. Magic! You get “roach”! For my next trick, I shall transform some ancient greek words into English …
Weirder things have happened to other words (i.e. the slang “joint” originally referred to opium-smoking paraphernalia, but look what it is now). With the term cucaracha already related to marijuna, it’s only a couple of steps from becoming the slang for partially smoked joint.
Perhaps one of those steps may be your explanation.
Why is everyone debating with mangeorge on this issue? We all have learned over the years on this site not to credit personal experience without presently verifiable evidence (e.g., published use). You just ignore such assertions, especially since you can’t argue those that make them out of them, since they “know”. :rolleyes:
The Master has spoken.
Oh, sorry. I’m new here.
X)
But this isn’t Great Debates. Which is probably why not everybody is debating with mangeorge.
So, in the absence of any literary citations, I’ll accept Oral Tribal Tradition.
I simply prefer my (and the OP’s) story.
It is a far better tale grandfather sings, than the story that falls from the mouth of the white man.
I’ll be back. I’m trying to tie slipsters’s reference to Hunter Thompson’s reference to a instructor at a seminar and the very astute comment made by Thompson’s Samoan friend, to what I heard from some stoned old beatnics.
Since both instances occured seperately, and long ago, I figure there must be some connection. Especially since I don’t know Thompson’s instructor. Or his unimaginative Samoan friend.*
We are, I feel, on the verge of a literary citation.
Even though none is needed in Comments.
*Is it supposed to mean something that the friend is Samoan?
Take your pick:
a) They were on a search for the American Dream, and Americans can’t tell the difference between a Mexican-American and a South Sea Islander (or any other brown foreigner). (“I think he’s probably Samoan. But it doesn’t matter, does it? Are you prejudiced?” “Oh, hell no!” he blurted. “I didn’t think so,” I said. “Because in spite of his race, this man is extremely valuable to me.”)
b) Hunter didn’t want to get sued by a Mexican-American lawyer for making up all that stuff.
c) Oscar didn’t want to lose any of street cred by having gone to Las Vegas with a gringo.
d) It was an inside joke between Hunter and Oscar.
The Criteron Collection DVD of “Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas” has a very good clip of Acosta reading from “The Revolt of the Cockroach People” if you want to see the “real” Samoan attorney.
Mmmm, cockroaches.
More on Oscar Zeta Acosta and his relationship to the Samoan attorney: