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With the help of Tom Dalzell's deliciously wicked book "The Slang of Sin" (Merriam Webster, $20), let's smoke out the origins of slang terms for marijuana.

"Reefer" first appeared in the popular song "Reefer Man," recorded by Don Redman in 1931. Some say "reefer" is an Anglicized version of the Spanish "grifa," a Mexican slang word for marijuana. Others attribute it to the Spanish "reef," meaning "to roll," because marijuana cigarettes are rolled.

"Grass," first cited in 1943, probably derives from the greenish appearance of marijuana, though one scholar has suggested it's a variant of "hashish."

"Joint," an earlier term for an opium den and later for a hypodermic needle, came to denote a marijuana cigarette during the 1940s. And "tea," first cited in 1930, may have originated from the earlier use of "tea" for the cheapest and weakest of hashish preparations, which was sipped like tea.

Ben Yagoda, writing for Slate.com, notes that the term "weed" first surfaced in 1929 when American Speech listed it "Among the New Words."

"Pot" first appeared in print on June 13, 1951, in, of all places, Time magazine. Appropriately enough, its origins are a bit hazy:

-- David Maurer, a lexicographer of underworld slang, suggests "pot" is a compression of "potiguaya," a Spanish slang word for a concoction of ripe marijuana seed pods and alcohol. "Potiguaya" is believed to be a compression of "potacion de guaya" (drink of grief).

-- Allen Brown presented another hypothesis in a 1958 San Francisco Chronicle article about beatniks. Because marijuana is called "tea," he explained, people started making puns on "teapot," as in, "I've got the tea, but who has the pot?"

-- According to Robert S. Gold's "Jazz Lexicon," pot took its name from the windowsill flowerpots in which it's often grown.

Other pipe dreams abound, e.g., opium users referred to opium as "pot," and the name transferred to marijuana; it's derived from the Southern use of "pot" to mean homemade bootleg whiskey; marijuana smokers blow smoke into a "pot" formed by their cupped hands and reinhale the smoke.

In 1970, the aptly named Hy Gardner cultivated this far-fetched explanation in his syndicated column "Glad You Asked That!": When a socialite jazz aficionado served rum cakes in small crockery pots to musicians, a guitarist poked two small holes in one of the pots, stuck a marijuana cigarette into one hole and sucked smoke from the other.

Now why does that explanation strike me as a crock?

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Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Connecticut, invites your language sightings. His book, "Mark My Words," is available for $9.99 on Amazon.com. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via email to WordGuy@aol.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254.

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