When “Weed” Became Cool
According to Google’s Ngram Viewer, “weed” didn’t take off as a slang term for marijuana until the early 1990s:
Ngram Viewer includes data only through 2008, but it appears the trend has continued and weed is now on top. In Google Books searches confined to 2013 publications, smoke marijuana pops up 69 times, smoke pot 94 times, and smoke weed 149 times. That is also the sense one gets from Urban Dictionary, whose users have been inspired to contribute 225 separate definitions for weed. The most popular one, with more than 39,000 “up” votes, was posted by “AYB” and is short and sweet: “God’s gift to the world. Brings peace when used wisely.” …
Why the recent weed dominance? It seems clear to me that it’s a generational thing. In the 1990s, a new generation of users wanted to distance themselves from their parents’ dope or pot (the latter dates from the 1930s and apparently originated in African-American slang). Weed was already in the lexicon, and provided a nice implicit variation on the hippie-ish grass.



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