Bogarting, the real story?

[Scot LaFaive]

>
> 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.)


Are you referring to the term "to nigger-lip"? I remember hearing that
unfortunate term in my younger days.

Scot

On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 8:37 AM, David A. Daniel <dad at pokerwiz.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "David A. Daniel" <dad at POKERWIZ.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Bogarting, the real story?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> As a former card-carrying sixties hippie I can firmly and without
> reservation attest that, at least on the West Coast, at least among
> card-carrying hippies, bogarting meant holding on to the joint too long,
> being too slow in passing it on. As in the song Don’t Bogart that Joint,
> "you been hangin on to it, and I sure would like a hit" has nothing to do
> with getting it wet, it has to do with not sharing it. We also all
> understood that bogarting was called bogarting because Bogart's cigarette
> always seemed to be stuck to his face, i.e., if the (marijuana) cigarette
> was stopped to long in any one place it was being bogarted. (Whether or not
> Bogart really had a cig in his mouth a lot is irrelevant; the perception
> was
> that he did.) As to getting it wet, I don’t recall ever hearing a word for
> it, but proper joint-smoking etiquette was to sort of draw your lips back
> over your teeth so that only dry, sort of under- or over-lip area was
> touching the joint. You were not supposed to let the joint touch the
> inside,
> wet part of your lips. I occasionally hear bogarting these days referring
> to
> something being hung on to or refused in sharing, but rarely, and I have no
> idea if it is still used in grass-smoking circles as, unfortunately, I
> haven’t been in one of those circles for many years. Sigh...
> DAD
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________
> We've got a long way to go and a short time to get there
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
> Of
> ronbutters at AOL.COM
> Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2009 9:44 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Bogarting, the real story?
>
>
>
> 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 naļve 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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