[Ads-l] Antedating of "Weed" (Cannabis)

[Laurence Horn]

Nice find, Fred. But I’m not sure these are cases in which _weed_ denotes ‘marijuana, marihuana, cannabis’, given that the first element of the compound (“marihuana weed”) does the specifying work in the first sentence and anaphora does the work in the second. Wouldn’t we need a case in which “weed” on its own refers unambiguously to cannabis?

LH

> On Apr 3, 2024, at 10:10 AM, Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU> wrote:
> 
> weed (OED, I.ii.5, 1917)
> 
> 1905 _Cincinnati Enquirer_ 2 Sept. 12 (ProQuest)  A man who has a marihuana weed or two doing skirt dances on his imagination. ... Sometimes I read a lurid description of this same weed.
> 
> Fred Shapiro
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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