Bogarting, the real story?

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

This has been discussed here many times.

What does it mean to say that HB "would hold on tight to a cigarette"? Nobody holds a cigarette loosely.

Bogart had prominent lips, and in the movies he often held a cigarette between his lips, hands-free. When one does this, the cigarette sometimes gets wet with saliva.

In the 1950s people sometimes shared a (tobacco) cigarette. The admonition, "Don't Bogart it!" merely meant "Don't get it wet!" It had nothing to do with unfair sharing or "hogging." Among more socially conscious smokers it stood in for a vile racist term.)

Perhaps within pot culture  the term took on the secondary meaning that Silliman puts forth (through hearer misunderstanding). My memory is that it continued to mean "Don't get spit on the doobie".

I have never heard the verb "Bogart" used with respect to "hogging" in any nonsmoking context. Maybe it does so occur--one would expect to hear it in the context of pie or cake or turn-taking in general if S's explanation is more than an occasional novice  pot-smoker's naïve mistake.
------Original Message------
From: Ron Silliman
Sender: ADS-L
To: ADS-L
ReplyTo: ADS-L
Subject: [ADS-L] Bogarting
Sent: Jul 14, 2009 7:10 AM

Bogarting is indeed a reference to Humphrey Bogart. It refers to the
practice of holding on tight to a marijuana cigarette (the way Bogart, more
in films like Maltese Falcon than Casablanca, would hold onto his
cigarettes). Hence, a failure to share what should be passed around...

Ron Silliman

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org