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.
Breukelen advocaat Reviewed by Breukelen advocaat on . Where does the word "pot" come from? I had an odd thought today while walking around on campus. I was thinking about how some of my friends and other people that I know jokingly refer to marijuana as "the pot," and how a lot of people who don't like marijuana or people who tend to think that it's the devils drug call it "pot." But where the hell did the word "pot" come from? I've heard people refer to marijuana as weed (most common usage probably), reefer, ganja etc. and even though I've never personally heard people use Rating: 5