Slang for Weed: Names, Amounts and Terms

Slang for weed changes by decade and by region, but a handful of names have stuck around for generations. Here are the most common names for weed, the terms people use for amounts, and what they mean.

Common names for weed

Name	What it means
Weed	The most common everyday name.
Pot	One of the oldest names, widely used since the mid-1900s.
Grass	An older name, on record since the 1920s and common in the 1960s and 70s.
Herb	A name that stresses it’s a plant.
Ganja	From the Hindi word for cannabis. Common in Jamaican English.
Mary Jane	A play on “marijuana”. Also shortened to MJ.
Reefer	An older name, on record since the early 1930s and made famous by the old scare film Reefer Madness.
Marijuana	From the Spanish marihuana. Mary Jane comes from it.
Cannabis	The plant’s scientific name, and the word Canadian labels use.
Bud	The flower of the plant, and the part people smoke.
Flower	The term most stores and labels use today.
Trees	A newer name, on record since the early 2000s.
Green	Named after the colour.
Dope	An older, general slang word for drugs that came to mean weed.
Chronic	Popular in 1990s hip-hop, for strong weed.
Devil’s lettuce	A joke name that pokes fun at old anti-cannabis scare talk.

Some jazz-age names have mostly faded: muggles (on record from 1928), tea (1933) and gage (the 1940s). The dates here are the earliest quotations in Green’s Dictionary of Slang, so people may have said the words before then.

Words for quality and strength

These words rate the weed itself. A few of them, like za and gas, also show up on seller menus.

Slang for good weed

• Loud: strong-smelling, high-quality weed. The usual explanation is that the smell is the “noise”.
• Gas: weed with a sharp, fuel-like smell. Often used for top-shelf flower.
• Za or exotic: short for “exotic”, meaning rare or premium strains.
• Fire: very good weed.
• Kush: named after the Hindu Kush mountains, where many classic indica strains come from. Now often used for any strong weed.
• Dank: strong, sticky and smelly, in a good way.
• Nugs: dense, good-quality buds. One bud is a nug.
• Top shelf: the best flower a seller has.

Slang for average or bad weed

• Mids: middle-quality weed, not bad and not great.
• Reggie or schwag: low-quality, often dry and seedy. Reggie is short for “regular”.
• Shake: the small loose bits at the bottom of a bag. See what is shake weed?

None of these words is a grade. AAA vs AAAA weed explains the letter grades and how to judge flower yourself.

Newer slang for weed

Some of the newest weed words are loud, gas, penjamin and za. Loud and gas, both in the good weed list above, are on record from 2014 and 2019. Za (also zaza), short for exotic, is on record from 2021.

A penjamin is a dab pen, and the name blends pen with Benjamin. It’s on record from 2019.

Broccoli, named after the green vegetable, is a little older and on record from 2001.

These dates are the earliest quotations in Green’s Dictionary of Slang (loud, gas, broccoli) and Wiktionary (za, penjamin), so the words may be older.

Slang for amounts

Amount slang mixes ounces and grams. An eighth, a quarter and a zip are fractions of an ounce, but people count them in grams.

Slang	Amount
A gram or a G	1 gram
An eighth	3.5 grams (one-eighth of an ounce)
A quarter or a 7	7 grams (one-quarter of an ounce)
A half or a half O	14 grams
An ounce, an O or a zip	28 grams
A lid	An old US name for about an ounce or a bit less, what fit in the lid of a tobacco tin
A QP	A quarter pound, about 112 grams
A half pound or a HP	About 224 grams
A pound, an LB or an elbow	About 448 grams. Elbow is probably a play on lb.
A nickel bag, a dime bag or a dub	$5, $10 or $20 worth. These US terms name a price, and the weight depended on the seller.

Sellers usually count 28 g to the ounce, so the pound sizes above are trade weights. A true pound is 453.6 g and a true quarter pound is 113.4 g.

On our shelf, flower comes in 7 g, 14 g and 28 g sizes, plus quarter and half pounds, so you’ll see “a 7”, “oz” and “QP” a lot. The weed measurements guide explains how the weights compare.

Slang for weed products

Product names double as slang, and a few products go by more than one name. Types of cannabis products explains how each one is used.

Slang	What it is
Pre-roll	A joint sold already rolled. An infused pre-roll has concentrate added.
Concentrates or extracts	Stronger forms made by pulling cannabinoids and terpenes out of the plant. Usually dabbed.
Wax	A loose name for soft concentrates made with butane, like budder and crumble.
Shatter	A glassy concentrate that snaps when cold.
Budder and crumble	Soft and creamy, or dry and crumbly.
Sauce and diamonds	Runny, terpene-rich sauce, and crystals of THCA that are often sold in it.
Live resin and cured resin	Extracts made from plants frozen at harvest, or from dried and cured plants.
Rosin	Oil pressed out with heat and pressure, with no solvents. Hash rosin is pressed from hash.
Hash	Resin glands from the plant, pressed or packed together.
Kief	The loose resin powder that collects in the bottom of a grinder.
Distillate	A refined oil of mostly one cannabinoid, usually THC.
Cart	A cartridge of oil that screws onto a battery. Ours are 1 g, 510 thread.
Liquid diamonds	THCA diamonds melted with terpene sauce into an oil for carts.
Disposable	An all-in-one vape pen with the battery built in, used until it’s empty.
Edibles	Foods and drinks made with cannabis, like gummies and chocolate.
Moon rocks or caviar	Flower coated in hash oil and often rolled in kief.

On our shelf you’ll find shatter, crumble, live and cured resin, diamonds and sauce, distillate, carts, disposables, pre-rolls and edibles.

Names for ways to smoke

• Joint: cannabis rolled in rolling paper. See how to roll a joint.
• Doobie: an older word for a joint.
• Pinner: a very thin joint.
• Blunt: cannabis rolled in a cigar or hemp wrap.
• Spliff: cannabis mixed with tobacco.
• Roach: the butt end of a joint. In the UK, roach means the card filter instead.
• Crutch: a rolled piece of card used to hold the end of a joint, much like the UK roach.
• Bowl: a pipe, or one load of a pipe or bong.
• Bong: a water pipe.
• Toke: one puff. Toking means smoking.
• Blaze or blaze up: to smoke weed, or to light a joint.
• Dab: a small amount of concentrate vaporized on a hot surface.
• Pen or cart: a vape pen and its cartridge.

The differences are covered in blunt vs joint and spliff vs joint.

Canadian weed slang

The words above are used in Canada too. A few more come from the letter grades sellers give flower and from British Columbia.

Slang	What it means
Quads	AAAA flower, the top letter grade. Short for quad A.
Trips	AAA flower, one grade down.
Dubs	AA flower, one grade below trips.
Bunk	Single-A flower, the bottom grade. Also any weak or bad weed.
BC bud	Weed grown in British Columbia. The name became a brand for the province’s weed.
Dried cannabis	The term Canadian labels use for flower and pre-rolls.

The letter grades come from Canada’s legacy market, and online sellers still use them. We say quads and trips too, though our listings spell out AAAA and AAA.

A Q, a QP and quads sound alike. A Q is UK slang for a quarter ounce, about 7 grams, and a QP is a quarter pound, about 112 grams. In Canada, quads means AAAA flower, so it names a grade rather than an amount.

Like BC bud, Acapulco gold and Thai stick are named after a place. Acapulco gold is a strong grade of weed from around Acapulco in Mexico, on record from 1965. Thai stick, on record from 1976, is weed from Thailand soaked in hash oil and tied around a thin stick.

Quebec French uses the word joint as well. The Office québécois de la langue française lists it as an accepted French word, borrowed from English in the 1970s.

UK slang for weed

The UK uses weed, bud, green and herb too, and has its own names for weed, joints and amounts.

UK slang	What it means
Draw	Cannabis in general, and sometimes an amount of it.
Puff	Cannabis, or smoking it.
Skunk	A name for very strong strains of herbal weed.
Sensi	Short for sinsemilla: seedless flower from plants that were never pollinated.
Resin or hash	Hashish, made from the plant’s resin.
Spliff	Any joint, often with tobacco mixed in.
Zoot or bifta	A joint.
Roach	The card filter rolled into the end of a joint.
A Henry	An eighth of an ounce, after Henry the Eighth.
Bob Hope	Rhyming slang for dope.

Why is weed called 420?

“420” comes from a group of students at San Rafael High School in California in 1971. They called themselves the Waldos and met at 4:20 pm to look for a rumoured abandoned cannabis crop. The time became their code word, and it spread through Grateful Dead fan circles.

In 1990, a flyer handed out at a Grateful Dead show in Oakland reached a High Times reporter, and the magazine carried the term around the world. April 20 (4/20) is now an unofficial cannabis holiday.

Common questions

What is a 7 in weed terms?

A 7 is 7 grams, the same as a quarter ounce.

What is the slang for an ounce of weed?

An ounce is often called an O or a zip. The usual story is that ounces were sold in zip-top bags.

What are some other names for weed?

Pot, grass, herb, ganja, Mary Jane, reefer, bud, flower and trees are the most common. Stronger weed gets called loud, gas, fire or dank.

What are the newest slang words for weed?

Loud, gas, penjamin and za are some of the newest slang words for weed. Loud is on record from 2014, gas and penjamin from 2019, and za from 2021. A penjamin is a dab pen, za is short for exotic, and loud and gas mean high-quality weed.

What is slang for good weed?

Loud, gas, fire, za, dank and top shelf all mean good weed, and nugs are dense, good-quality buds. In Canada, quads means AAAA flower, the top letter grade.

What is UK slang for weed?

Draw, puff, skunk and green are common British words for weed. A joint is often called a spliff or a zoot, and an eighth is a Henry.

For the more technical words you’ll see on labels, like live resin, THCA and terpenes, see the cannabis glossary.