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

[Shapiro, Fred]

I had similar thoughts myself.  But when I am antedating the OED I generally accept the OED's interpretations of what kinds of usage of a word belong in a given subsection of an entry.  The current OED entry for "weed" meaning the cannabis plant includes a citation with "marijuana weed."

Fred Shapiro


________________________________
From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, April 3, 2024 11:30 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject: Re: Antedating of "Weed" (Cannabis)

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 - https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.americandialect.org%2F&data=05%7C02%7Cfred.shapiro%40YALE.EDU%7C5d1514f536b64883fd4908dc53f2fa9c%7Cdd8cbebb21394df8b4114e3e87abeb5c%7C0%7C0%7C638477550252820646%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=9U0d0UvnYG9%2BLXlM3Nwi1Yv4bEj9mk6FaSJMl3qrNZo%3D&reserved=0<http://www.americandialect.org/>

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.americandialect.org%2F&data=05%7C02%7Cfred.shapiro%40YALE.EDU%7C5d1514f536b64883fd4908dc53f2fa9c%7Cdd8cbebb21394df8b4114e3e87abeb5c%7C0%7C0%7C638477550252829263%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=yYjpR7XC53%2BaBFk1O0jrx5QG%2FZjPS2lKjAJfcP8LagM%3D&reserved=0<http://www.americandialect.org/>

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