Grass
A mid-20th-century American slang term for cannabis, popularized in the 1960s counterculture and now considered dated.
"Grass" is just a slang word for cannabis — nothing more, nothing less. It doesn't refer to a specific strain, potency, or preparation. If you hear someone use it today, they're probably over 50 or quoting a movie. The term peaked in American usage between roughly 1960 and 1980, then faded as "weed" and "pot" took over. There's no chemistry here to explain, just etymology and generational vocabulary.
Definition
Grass (/ɡræs/) is English-language slang for cannabis, particularly the dried flower smoked recreationally. It is a generic term — it does not specify a strain, chemotype, potency, or method of consumption. Someone offering you "grass" in 1969 and someone offering you "weed" in 2024 mean essentially the same thing.
The word appears in major slang dictionaries as a synonym for marijuana, with documented use in American English from at least the 1940s [1][2].
Etymology and history
The origin of "grass" as a cannabis term is not definitively pinned down. The Oxford English Dictionary and Green's Dictionary of Slang trace its cannabis-specific use to mid-20th-century American English, with the visual resemblance of shredded cannabis leaf to lawn clippings being the most commonly cited explanation [1][2].
The term gained mainstream visibility through the 1960s counterculture. It appears in song lyrics, journalism, and government anti-drug literature of the period. By the 1970s it was common enough that the U.S. National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse used it casually alongside more clinical vocabulary in public-facing materials [3].
Usage declined through the 1990s and 2000s as "weed" became the dominant casual term in North America. Linguistic surveys of cannabis vocabulary consistently rank "weed" and "pot" above "grass" in current usage [4].
What it refers to (and what it doesn't)
What "grass" means: dried cannabis flower, generally smoked. In context it can stretch to mean cannabis in general.
What it doesn't mean:
- It is not a strain, cultivar, or chemovar.
- It does not imply low potency, high potency, indica, or sativa.
- It is not related to grasses in the botanical sense. Cannabis is in the family Cannabaceae, not Poaceae (true grasses) [5].
- It is unrelated to the British/Australian slang "grass" meaning a police informant, which has a separate etymology from rhyming slang [2].
There is no chemistry specific to "grass" — the cannabinoids and terpenes present depend entirely on the particular plant material, not the slang used to describe it.
Used in articles
You'll see "grass" appear in Weedpedia mostly in historical contexts: discussions of 1960s–70s drug policy, the early decriminalization movement, and cultural artifacts from that era. For current vocabulary, see weed, pot, and flower.
Sources
- Book Green, J. (2010). Green's Dictionary of Slang. Chambers/Oxford University Press. Entry: "grass, n."
- Book Oxford English Dictionary. Entry: "grass, n." sense relating to marijuana. Oxford University Press.
- Government National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse (1972). Marihuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding. U.S. Government Printing Office.
- Peer-reviewed Lukianowicz, N. (1976). "The discovery of a new vocabulary: cannabis slang." British Journal of Addiction, 71(2), 177–182.
- Peer-reviewed Small, E. (2015). "Evolution and classification of Cannabis sativa (marijuana, hemp) in relation to human utilization." Botanical Review, 81(3), 189–294.
How this page was made
Generation history
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