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

[Jonathan Lighter]

OED dropped the ball on that one.

JL

On Wed, Apr 3, 2024 at 12:52 PM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:

> 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
> >
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