Weed

From Old English wēod ("plant, herb"). As cannabis slang it first appears in U.S. jazz-era African-American vernacular; American Speech listed it "Among the New Words" in 1929, defined as a marijuana cigarette, and the Chicago Defender used "the weed" in 1932. Raymond Chandler uses the bare modern form by 1949. Google Ngram and Slate's Ben Yagoda note that "weed" overtook "pot" and "dope" in the 1990s as a new generation sought fresher vocabulary. Predominantly North American; now the dominant conversational term.