Marijuana (word)

Etymology

The term, originally spelled variously as "marihuana" or "mariguana", originated in Mexican Spanish.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term may come from the Nahuatl mallihuan, meaning "prisoner". Another explanation on the etymology of marijuana focused on mexican traditional healers or herbalists who sold cannabis in street markets. These, mostly, women, were called “Marias.” This combined with the argot for the revolutionary troops, “Juanes,” resulting in the word “Marihuana" However, linguist Jason D. Haugen finds no semantic basis for a connection to mallihuan, suggesting that the phonetic similarity may be "a case of accidental homophony". Cannabis is not known to have been present in the Americas before Spanish contact, making an indigenous word an unlikely source.

Other suggestions trace the possible origins of the word to Chinese ma ren hua (麻仁花, lit. 'hemp seed flower'), possibly itself originating as a loan from an earlier semitic root *mrj "hemp". The Semitic root is also found in the Spanish word mejorana and in English marjoram, which could be related to the word marihuana. This is also known in Mexico as "Chinese oregano".

Additionally, traditional association with the personal name María Juana ('Mary Jane') is probably a folk etymology. The original Mexican Spanish used forms with the letter (marihuana), and is famously used in the Mexican Revolutionary era (1910–1920) version of the lyrics of La Cucaracha. Forms using the letter (marijuana) seem to be an innovation of English, and their later appearance in French and Spanish are probably due to English influence.

Chris S. Duvall, an associate professor of geography at the University of New Mexico, provided a different theory of the word's etymology in 2015 on the website The Conversation:

The word "marijuana" as we know it today did not appear until 1846 in Farmacopea Mexicana, though it was spelled "mariguana". In most following instances, the word was spelled marihuana. In Chilean Spanish, mariguanza is the dance of a shaman in an altered state of consciousness.

English use

Early use of the term ''marijuana''

The word entered English usage in the late 19th century. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first known appearance of a form of the word in English is in Hubert Howe Bancroft's 1873 The Native Races of the Pacific States of North America. According to the second edition of Webster's New International Dictionary, the word originally denoted a wild species of South American tobacco, Nicotiana glauca.

The use of "marihuana" in American English increased dramatically in the 1930s, when it was preferred as a "foreign-sounding name" to stigmatize it during debates on the drug's use. The word was codified into law and became part of common American English with the passing of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.

Formal usage

Many legal references prefer the term "cannabis", for instance in the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. However, many laws and regulations often use the term "marihuana" or "marijuana", for instance the Controlled Substances Act in the United States. Some cannabis reform organizations, such as the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and Marijuana Policy Project, alongside political organizations like Legal Marijuana Now Party of United States and the Marijuana Party of Canada, also use this term.

References

References

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14. Nidia Olvera, We Must Continue Calling the Cannabis Plant “Marijuana”, Chacruna, 2018, https://chacruna.net/why-continue-calling-cannabis/
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17. Weston La Barre, (1980) "History and Ethnography of Cannabis", in Culture in Context, Selected writings. Durham NC: Duke University Press.
18. Alan Piper, "[http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp153_marijuana.pdf The Mysterious Origins of the Word 'Marijuana']", Sino-Platonic Papers, 153 (July 2005)
19. Olvera-Hernández, Nidia. (2018-02-19). "We Must Continue Calling the Cannabis Plant "Marijuana"".
20. Duvall, Chris S.. (2019). "The African roots of marijuana".
21. Duvall, Chris S.. (30 June 2015). "Decriminalization doesn't address marijuana's standing as a drug of the poor".
22. "The African Origins of Cannabis Culture and How It Got to…".
23. Duvall, Chris S.. (2019). "The African roots of marijuana".
24. Alan Piper, "The Mysterious Origins of the Word 'Marijuana'", ''Sino-Platonic Papers'' 153 (July 2005)
25. “Marijuana, N. (a).” ''Merriam-Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language'', 2nd ed., Merriam-Webster, 1949, p. 1503.