Weed
The most common English slang term for cannabis, used interchangeably with 'pot,' 'bud,' and 'marijuana' since the early 20th century.
'Weed' just means cannabis. It's not a specific product, strength, or strain — it's a casual catch-all that can refer to dried flower, the plant itself, or cannabis as a category. The word carries no chemical meaning. When someone says 'weed,' they almost always mean dried, cured Cannabis flower meant for smoking or vaping. Don't read more into it than that. Dispensary menus rarely use the word because it's informal, but it remains the dominant slang in North America.
Definition
Weed (noun, mass): informal English for cannabis. In everyday use it most often refers to the dried, cured flowers of Cannabis sativa L. that are smoked, vaporized, or used to make edibles and extracts. It can also refer more loosely to the plant itself or to cannabis as a general category ("do you smoke weed?").
The word carries no technical meaning. It does not specify potency, cultivar, form, or chemistry. A gram of 28% THC flower and a gram of 12% THC flower are both "weed."
Origin of the term
The general English word weed meaning a wild or unwanted plant dates to Old English wēod [1]. Its application to cannabis is American slang that appears in print from around the 1920s, alongside the rise of marijuana as a popular term during the same period [2][3]. The slang likely reflects the plant's vigorous, weed-like growth habit rather than any judgment about its value.
By the 1960s, weed was firmly established in U.S. counterculture vocabulary and has remained the dominant casual term in North America ever since [3].
What 'weed' usually refers to in practice
When someone in a legal market or on the street says "weed," they almost always mean dried cannabis flower — the trimmed, cured buds of female plants, which contain the trichomes where cannabinoids like THC and CBD and terpenes are concentrated [4].
"Weed" is rarely used to describe:
- Concentrates (called wax, shatter, rosin, hash, etc.)
- Edibles (called edibles or by product name)
- Tinctures, topicals, or vape cartridges
This is a usage convention, not a rule. Some people will say "I do weed" meaning any form of cannabis. Context decides.
What 'weed' doesn't tell you
The word weed by itself tells you nothing about:
- Potency. Modern flower can range from under 10% THC to over 30% THC by dry weight [5].
- Chemovar or 'strain.' Indica vs. sativa labels and strain names are marketing categories that correlate poorly with actual chemistry [6].
- Quality or safety. Legal-market flower is typically tested for pesticides, microbes, and heavy metals; illicit-market product is not [7].
- Legal status. Cannabis remains a Schedule I controlled substance under U.S. federal law as of 2024, even where states have legalized it [8].
If you want to know what's actually in a product, look at the certificate of analysis (COA), not the slang label.
Used in articles
On Weedpedia we generally use "cannabis" in technical contexts and "weed" or "flower" in casual ones. See also: Flower, Marijuana, Cannabis (plant), Bud.
Sources
- Book Oxford English Dictionary, entry for 'weed, n.1'. Oxford University Press.
- Reported Halperin, A. (2018). Marijuana: Is it time to stop using a word with racist roots? The Guardian, 29 January 2018.
- Book Booth, M. (2003). Cannabis: A History. Doubleday/Picador.
- Peer-reviewed Andre, C. M., Hausman, J.-F., & Guerriero, G. (2016). Cannabis sativa: The plant of the thousand and one molecules. Frontiers in Plant Science, 7, 19.
- Peer-reviewed ElSohly, M. A., Chandra, S., Radwan, M., Majumdar, C. G., & Church, J. C. (2021). A comprehensive review of cannabis potency in the United States in the last decade. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, 6(6), 603-606.
- Peer-reviewed Smith, C. J., Vergara, D., Keegan, B., & Jikomes, N. (2022). The phytochemical diversity of commercial Cannabis in the United States. PLOS ONE, 17(5), e0267498.
- Government U.S. Food and Drug Administration. FDA Regulation of Cannabis and Cannabis-Derived Products: Questions and Answers.
- Government U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Drug Scheduling — Marijuana listing under Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act.
How this page was made
Generation history
Drafting assistance and fact-check automation are used, with a human operator spot-checking on a weekly basis. See how articles are made.
Related
- Bud — The dried, cured flower of a female cannabis plant — the part most people smoke, vaporize,...