Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 March 5

= March 5 =

Most common terms for marijuana
Is there a chart of the most common slang words for marijuana over time (e.g. weed, pot, dope, grass, ganja, etc.) 135.180.244.18 (talk) 22:45, 5 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Try https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=weed%2Cpot%2Cdope%2Cgrass%2Cganja 82.166.199.42 (talk) 08:24, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * There sure were a lot of weed smokers around 1562. Or might it be that some of these uses are for other senses? --Lambiam 11:38, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Hashish and Charas have been well known forms of marijuana, consumed for centuries, and would have been in use at that time in many parts of the world. That being said, it is likely that many of the uses of terms like weed, pot, and grass are for non-marijuana terms.  Ngrams cannot distinguish between sense, it is just a regex text search.  -- Jayron 32 11:55, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Yup, trying to use Google ngrams to find such data is ridiculous. The same strange 1560s blip for 'pot' is there if you search for 'pot' and 'pan' instead. AndyTheGrump (talk) 11:59, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The blip is likely due to a having a relatively low sample size for 1560. Google Ngram Viewer uses the corpus of all of scanned works in Google's databases; however the number of scanned texts from 1560 is likely to be very low, making weird glitches like this in the data much more likely.  -- Jayron 32 18:50, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah, this isn't useful because these words are more often used for other things. Also, they're slang which means they would typically be used in informal contexts rather than in books. 135.180.244.18 (talk) 19:07, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * "Ganja" pretty much only has that meaning. It's apparently been used in English for a long time, but its recent prominence is mainly due to Jamaican influence. AnonMoos (talk) 02:33, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * So many joined in to criticise the ngrams data, but has anyone as much as attempted to find any better data? 82.166.199.42 (talk) 10:36, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * This Google Ngrams view is more informative, but note that "dope" can also refer to some other substances. --Lambiam 11:42, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Also aircraft dope, peg dope, pipe dope, horse dope and dope testing; none of which are connected marijuana. Alansplodge (talk) 12:41, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
 * "Dope" was also old Southern US slang for a soft drink. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 04:41, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
 * And "dope" is an old-fashioned term for information (as a noun) and for figuring things out (as a verb). ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:34, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Don't be a dope, get the straight dope from the RefDesks. DuncanHill (talk) 01:01, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
 * That's dope! 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 15:39, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Why spend time looking for that which you are fairly certain cannot be found. It's like criticizing people for not spending more time searching for bigfoot.  -- Jayron 32 13:11, 9 March 2023 (UTC)