Just for fun, I checked etymonline.com, and the words “pot,” “grass,” and “weed” all are attested in print in the 20s and 30s. “Pot” is traced back to 1938, as "probably a shortened for of Mexican Spanish potiguaya “marijuana leaves.” “Grass” is “recorded by 1932” to mean marijuana. “Weed” is cited as “from 1920s.” “Dope,” as “narcotic drug” goes back to 1889, “from practice of smoking semi-liquid opium preparation.”
At times like this (hell: at most times), I find on-point sagacity in the words of George Carlin:
We had gotten into grass about, like I say, '53, '52 and most guys drank before they bothered with anything like that and there were only two things around; there was only grass and smack. None of those…slick exotic things you guys have today. Everybody drank first. Saturday night, whaddaya do? Buy something; puke on your shoes. That’s why we heard about grass. The word was out. Marijuana! Marijjjjjjjjjjjjjuana! Bush, hemp, boo, smoke, weed, gauge, grass, tea…Mary Jane. That’s in all the books. “Mary Jane…marijuana!” Nobody ever said it. “Hey, got any Mary Jane?” “( Stoner tokes and says: ) What’s it do, man, getcha high?”
Dope. Pot. Or occasionally smot. As in “wanna poke some smot?”
Doobage. Or just “smoke.”
That is great and I am going to use it.
Friend in high school: “Wanna get high?”
Me: “Yea”
Friend: “Got any?”
I have generally called it marijuana. Which may reflect the fact that I am generally using the term in legal reports.
When I was a younger man, we called it grass or pot. Short simple words.
Dope was a general term for all drugs, not just marijuana. It seemed to imply it was some harder drug like heroin.
I was aware of the term herb but anyone using that was trying to sound like a Rastafarian. And few things look dumber than a white boy trying to sound like a Rastafarian. Even as a clueless teenager I knew better than that.
“Pot” is an interesting puzzle. The problem with the “potiguaya” derivation is there is no evidence of that word ever actually being used in Spanish. The OED comments on the etymology with this:
Origin uncertain and disputed. The most popular theory explains the word as being derived < the supposed Mexican Spanish words *potiguaya or *potaguaya cannabis leaves, or < *potación de guaya , lit. ‘drink of grief’, supposedly denoting a drink of wine or brandy in which marijuana buds were steeped; however, no corroborating evidence has been found to support the use of any of these terms in Spanish (although *potiguaya is recorded in an English glossary of drug terminology slightly earlier than the earliest example of the present word: see quot. [1936] in etymological note. Alternatively, perhaps connected with pot n.1 [i.e. a vessel used for cooking].
Weed, bud, or “edibles” if it’s not in smokeable form. Doobie, if it’s a joint. A lot of Oaklanders say “dope”. I used the word “cannabis” with my dad because he didn’t know what it meant.
As a kid (70’s-80’s) we called it “weed” most often.
The past couple of decades, I’ve mostly heard it referenced as “420”. Maybe that is regional? - as I haven’t seen it mentioned yet in this thread. I’m in the Midwest.
Now that it is legal for recreational use in Illinois, I’ve given the “edibles” a few tries. The buzz just felt so inferior to what I remember feeling in my teens and 20’s when I’d smoked a joint. Maybe aging has changed my physiology in that I don’t get amazingly stoned any more. It is a bit of a disappointment!
Dictionary.com says “Boo” (for grass) first appeared around 1955-60.
Usually ‘Weed’, often ‘Herb’ or ‘Botanicals’. Sometimes ‘Trees’
‘Flowers’, ‘blossoms’ on occasion.
‘Cannabis’ if more scientific.
‘Sativa’ respectively ‘Indica’ sometimes, but there’s problems with that distinction
As long as we don’t yet have widespread decriminalization, tolerance or legalization in the US and Europe, I dislike using the term ‘Marihuana’ or ‘Marijuana’ myself, there’s too much racism and negative Harry Anslinger history in that term. Hopefully that changes. In the news and scientific articles, ok, as they refer to it with the same term as in in laws.
I like “Sparkling Oregano”, I should use that
I expect in the next 8 years, Pot will be de-schedule at the Federal level and hopefully within 2 years. Leaving it to the states. The MORE Act is suppose to come to vote this week I think. Though I can only find a link to the 2019 bill.
It should pass the House, it won’t pass the Senate this time I expect.
Funny thing about “trees”. Yeah, if you hold a nice bud up by the stem, it looks like a tree. But AFAIK “trees” is fairly new. I never heard the term in my youth.
On Reddit, the marijuana folks created the subreddit r/trees for cannabis discussion. The botanists/dendrologists bit back, creating the subreddit r/marijuanaenthusiasts for discussion of trees.
It’s all good.
Dagga, mostly.
Yes, I got trees from Reddit. It’s a conveniently obscure term, so Die_Capacitrix and I can have clandestine discussions that only reddit ents are likely to know the topic
Cannabis. Flower or edibles. Unless I’m smoked up with my friends, then it’s all giggling about pot jokes.
Here it’s mostly Hashish, or sometimes Kef.
I’m in the midwest as well. While I’m plenty familiar with the term 420, I’ve never heard it actually called 420. It’s just a word/number that refers to everything about it such that if someone says 420, we all know what they’re talking about or all the stoners can do the 69 version of ‘nice’ when 420 randomly comes up in an unrelated conversation.
I haven’t done edibles in the current sense of the word, but, back in college I extracted the THC into some olive oil and put the oil in some capsules. I did some type of calculation and decided that you needed 6 giant pills to get a good buzz. We all took 6 pills and about 2 hours later you suddenly realized you were really stoned. Between the time it took and not having the usual hoarse voice/rough throat from coughing, it took a few minutes to realize why you felt funny.
How about sticky icky.
Ever hear “bazooka” used for a cone (big joint)?
I knew a guy from Mali who had also spent time in South Africa. We were passing around a cone, discussing how Europeans mix tobacco in theirs (a strange affectation, IMO). When asked what he’d call a cone back home, he told us”bazoooooooka”.
It is called a Camberwell carrot. It was invented in Camberwell and is shaped like a carrot.