Quote Originally Posted by Bree1978
I call it pot. It's what's always been used around me. I always thought the term emerged in the 60's...a time where "all the teenagers are smoking it and the country is going to 'pot'"......
B
Well, the term "going to pot" is over 400 years old, but some people did actually adapt the expression to modern meanings like those you suggest - in the '60's and since. I don't think that the original use of the word "pot" for marijuana was linked to this expression, though, since users who called it "pot" didn't consider it a bad habit or a negative thing. Nobody knows for sure why it started.


Going to Pot:
Around 1542, when the phrase first appeared, "to go to pot" was to be cut up like chunks of meat destined for the stew pot. Such a stew was usually the last stop for the remnants of a once substantial cut of meat or poultry, so "going to pot" made perfect sense as a metaphor for anything, from a national economy to a marriage, that had seen better days. Early uses of the metaphor were usually in the form "go to the pot."
Previous Columns/Posted 01/21/99

pot
Marijuana.
[Origin unknown.]
going to pot - definition of going to pot by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.